KGB - Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev 0060166053, 0060921099

Table of contents :
Tsarist Origins (1565 -- 1917) --
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart conspiracy" (1917 -- 21) --
Foreign intelligence and "active measures" in the Dzerzhinsky era (1919 -- 27) --
Stalin and spy mania (1926 -- 38) --
"Enemies of the people" abroad (1929 -- 40) --
Sigint, agent penetration, and the magnificent five from Cambridge (1930 -- 39) --
The Second World War (1939 -- 41) --
The Great Patriotic War (1941 -- 45) --
The takeover of eastern Europe (1944 -- 48) --
The Cold War: The Stalinist Phase (1945 -- 53) --
The Cold War after Stalin (1953 -- 63) --
The Brezhnev Era: The East, the Third World, and the West (1964 -- 72/73) --
The decline and fall of Detente (1972 -- 84) --
The Gorbachev era 1985.

Citation preview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER CHRIS1DPIIER

ANDREW

AND OIEB 60RDKVSKV

fJil

M\M W

nil

(!IE

"Fascinating. ..[an] exhaustive and lively history... too authoritative to

be ignored." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt,

New

York Times

By Christopher Andrew Theophile Delcasse and the Making of the Entente Cordiale

The

World War: Causes and Consequences

First

France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion

WITH

A.S.

KANYA-FORSTNER

The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence

Communities

in the

Twentieth Century

WITH DAVID DILKS Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community

Her Majesty's

Codebreaking and Signals Intelligence Intelligence

and International Relations 1900-1945

WITH JEREMY NOAKES

CHRISTOPHER ANDREW

AND OLEG GORDIEVSKY

THE INSIDE STORY Of

Its

Foreign Operations

from Lenin to Gorbachev

Harper Perennial A Division o/HarperCoWinsPublisbers

The

publishers thank Faber

reproduce

lines

&

Faber Ltd. for permission to

from W. H. Auden's Spain.

Unacknowledged photographs are taken from private collections. The publishers have attempted to trace copyright owners.

Where and

made they apologize make due acknowledgment in future edi-

inadvertent infringement has been

will

be happy to

tions.

A

hardcover edition of

this

book was published

1990 by

in

HarperCollins Publishers.

kgb: the inside story. Copyright © 1990 by Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any

manner whatsoever without

written per-

mission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in cal articles

criti-

and reviews. For information address HarperCollins

Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street,

New

NY

York,

10022.

First HarperPerennial edition published 1991

Designed by Cassandra

J.

The Library of Congress has catalogued

Pappas the hardcover

edition as follows:

Andrew, Christopher M.

KGB

:

the inside story / Christopher

Gordievsky. p.

—

Andrew, Oleg

1st ed.

cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 1.

0-06-016605-3

Soviet Union. Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezo-

— History. —

pasnosti

2.

Intelligence service

Union History. I. Gordievsky, Oleg. JN6529.I6A53 1990 327.1'247'009—dc20

—Soviet

II. Title.

90-55525

ISBN 91

92

0-06-092109-9

93

94

95

(pbk.)

CC/HC

10

987654321

To

and

to

Leila, Maria,

and Anna

in

Moscow

Darcy and Ken, Louisa and John in the

in

Washington,

hope that the spread of human rights

in the Soviet

Union

enable them

will,

very soon,

to meet.

Contents

The Evolution of the

KGB

ix

Abbreviations Used in Text Transliteration

xi

of Russian Names

xvii

Maps Europe 1942 Postwar Europe

xviii

xx

Introduction

1

1.

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

17

2.

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and

the "Lockhart

Conspiracy" (1917-21) 3.

38

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" in the

Dzerzhinsky Era (1919-27)

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

4.

Stalin

5.

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

6.

Sigint,

65 107

150

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent

Five from Cambridge (1930-39)

vii

173

CONTENTS

viii

7.

The Second World War (1939-41)

8.

The Great

9.

The Takeover of Eastern Europe (1944-48)

341

10.

The Cold War: The

367

11.

The Cold War After

12.

The Brezhnev Era: The East, and the West (1964-72/73)

Patriotic

War

233

270

(1941-45)

Stalinist

Phase (1945-53)

422

Stalin (1953-63)

13.

The Decline and

14.

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

the Third World,

477

Fall of Detente (1972-84)

Appendix A

KGB

Appendix B

Heads of the

606

Chairmen

647

First Chief Directorate

649

(Foreign Intelligence)

Appendix C

The Organization of The Organization of

the

the

KGB KGB

651 First

Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence)

KGB

First

532

652

Chief Directorate

(Foreign Intelligence)

654

Headquarters, Yasenevo

Yasenevo

— Main Building

The Organization of Appendix D

KGB

a

KGB

655

Residency

656

Residents in the United States

and Abroad

657

Notes

665

Bibliography

729

Index

745

Illustrations follow

pages 232, 424, and 616

The Evolution of the

December 1917

Cheka

February 1922

Incorporated

July 1923

OGPU

July 1934

Reincorporated

February 1941

NKGB

July 1941

Reincorporated

KGB

NKVD

in

(as

GPU)

4

in

NKVD

(as

GUGB)

in

NKVD

(as

GUGB)

4-

NKGB 4 MGB

April 1943

March 1946

4

October 1947-

Foreign intelligence transferred to

Kl

November 1951 March 1953

Combined with

March 1954

KGB

The term

KGB is

used in

organization throughout

191 7 as well -

when

it

as,

adopted

more its

this

MVD

book

its history,

to

form enlarge i

MVD

to denote the Soviet State Security

since its foundation as the

Cheka

specifically, to refer to State Security since

present name.

IX

in

1954

Abbreviations

Used

in

Text

AEC AFSA AK ANC ASA

Atomic Energy Commission (USA)

AVO

Hungarian security

BfV

BND

FRG FRG

Cheka

All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-

CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

CND

Campaign

Armed Polish

Forces Security Agency (USA): predecessor of

Home Army

(World

War

NSA

II)

African National Congress

Army

Agency (USA): predecessor of

Security

service: predecessor of

AFSA

AVH

security service

foreign intelligence agency

Revolution and Sabotage (Soviet security service, 1917-22)

for

(USA)

Nuclear Disarmament (UK)

Comintern

Communist

COMSUBLANT

Commander

CPUSA CUSS

Communist Party of

DA

American Department (Cuban

International (U.S.) Atlantic submarine forces

the

Cambridge University

of

USA

Socialist Society

DGI) xi

intelligence agency independent

ABBREVIATIONS USED

xii

DGSE DGSP

TEXT

IN

French foreign intelligence service

DIE

Rumanian Rumanian

DISA

Angolan

DLB DS DST

Bulgarian security service

EC

European Community

ECCI

Executive Committee of Communist International

FBI

Federal Bureau of Investigation

FCD

First Chief (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate of

FN LA FRELIMO

National Front for the Liberation of Angola

FRG

Federal Republic of

Germany

GC&CS

Government Code

&

Dead

security service (Securitate)

foreign intelligence agency

security service

box

letter

French security service

KGB

Front for the Liberation of Mozambique

Cypher School (UK): predecessor of

GCHQ GCHQ GDR

Government Communications Headquarters (UK)

Gehlen Org

FRG semiofficial BND

GKES GKNT GPU

Soviet State

GRU GUGB

Soviet military intelligence agency

German Democratic Republic

Soviet State

Committee Committee

Economic Relations and Technology

for External for Science

State Political Directorate (Soviet security service incorporated in

NKVD,

1922-23)

Main Administration of within

Gulag

foreign intelligence agency: predecessor of

NKVD,

State Security (Soviet security service

1934-43)

Labor camps directorate

Humint

Intelligence derived

HVA

GDR

IADL

International Association of Democratic Lawyers

from human sources

foreign intelligence agency

Branch (India) Department of Soviet Communist Party Central Committer

IB

Intelligence

ID

International

INO

Foreign

Intelligence

GUGB, INU

Foreign

IRA

Irish

Department

1920-41: predecessor of

Intelligence Directorate 1941-54: predecessor of FCD

Republican

Army

of Cheka/GPU/OGPU/ INU of

NKGB/GUGB/MGB,

Abbreviations Used

in

Text

IRD

Information Research Department

IWA

International

JIC

Joint Intelligence

xiii

(UK)

Workers Aid

German

Committee (UK)

SSD

K-5

East

KGB

Committee of State Security

KHAD Kl

Afghan security service Committee of Information (Soviet foreign intelligence agency initially combining foreign directorates of MGB and GRU,

KOR

Polish Workers' Defense

KPD KR Line

German Communist

KRO

Interwar

security service, 1947-49: predecessor of

(Soviet security service, established

1954)

1947-51)

Committee

Party

KGB

Counterintelligence department in

counterespionage

OGPU/GUGB,

residencies

department

predecessor of the

of

Cheka/GPU/

KGB Second Chief Direc-

torate

GCHQ

LPG LSR

London Processing Group,

MGB

Soviet Ministry of State Security, 1946-54

MGIMO

Moscow

MI5

British security service

MOR

Monarchist Association of Central Russia ("The Trust")

transcription service of

Left Socialist Revolutionary

State Institute for International Relations

MPLA

Marxist Popular

MVD

Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1946—

NEP

New Economic

NKGB

People's Commissariat of State Security (Soviet security service,

NKVD

People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (incorporated State

NSA

National Security Agency

NSZRiS

The

Movement

for the Liberation of

Policy

1941 and 1943^6: predecessor of

MGB)

Security 1922-23, 1934-43): predecessor of

People's

Angola

Union

MVD

(USA)

for Defense of

Country and Freedom

(anti-

Bolshevik organization)

NTS

National Labor Alliance (Soviet emigre Social-Democratic organization)

OAU OGPU

Organization for African Unity Unified

State

Political

Directorate (Soviet security service,

1923-34)

Okhrana

Tsarist security service, 1881-1917

ABBREVIATIONS USED

xiv

IN

TEXT

OMS

International Liaison

OSS

Office of Strategic Services (wartime predecessor of the

OUN OZNA

Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

PCC PDPA PDRY PLO

Cuban Communist Party (since 1975) Afghan Communist Party

POUM

Workers' Unification Party (Spanish Marxist/Trotskyist Party

PPR PRC PR Line

Polish Workers' [Communist] Party: predecessor of

PROD

NSA

PSP PZPR

Polish United Workers' [Communist] Party

Yugoslav security

Department of Communist International

service: predecessor of

CIA)

UDBA

Yemen

People's Democratic Republic of Palestine Liberation Organization

during 1930s)

RENAMO

PZPR

People's Republic of China Political intelligence

department

in

KGB

residencies

Production Office

Cuban Communist

Party: predecessor of

PCC

ROVS

Mozambique National Resistance Russian Combined Services Union (White Russian emigre

RPC

Russian Political Committee (anti-Bolshevik organization)

SACP SAS SB SDECE

South African Communist Party

group)

Special Air Service

(UK)

Polish security service

Sigint

French foreign intelligence agency: predecessor of DGSE Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania Social Democratic Party (UK) East German Socialist Unity [Communist] Party Intelligence derived from intercepting, analyzing and decrypting

SIM

Spanish Republican security service

SIS

Secret Intelligence Service

SMA

Soviet Military Administration (East

Smersh

"Death

SNASP SOE

Mozambique

Sovnarkom

Soviet Council of People's

SPD SR

German Social-Democratic

SS SSD

Nazi "protection squad'Ysecurity service

S&T

Scientific

SDI

SDKPiL

SDP SED

signals

(UK) Germany)

to Spies!" (Soviet military counterintelligence, 1943-46)

security service

Special Operations Executive

(UK)

Commissars Party

Socialist Revolutionaries

GDR

security service ("Stasi")

and technical/technological

intelligence

Abbreviations Used

Text

xv

GHQ/high command

Stavka

Wartime

StB

Czechoslovak security service

TUC

Trades Union Congress (UK)

Soviet

in

UB

Polish security service, predecessor of

UDBA

Yugoslav security service

UNITA

Union

USC

Unitarian Service Commission

U-2

American spy plane

VMS

Supreme Monarchist Council (White Russian emigre group) Soviet Military Industrial Commission

VPK

WES WiN

for the Total Liberation of

SB

Angola

West European Secretariat (Comintern) "Freedom and Independence" (last active remnant of Polish

Home Army)

WPC

World Peace Council

X Line

Scientific

and technological

intelligence

residencies

ZANU ZAPU

Zimbabwe African National Union Zimbabwe African People's Union

ZOMO

Polish paramilitary police

department

in

KGB

Transliteration of

Russian Names

we have followed

In transliterating Russian names,

a simplified version

Names and BBC Monitoring Service. Simplifications include the substitution of "y" for

of the method used by the U.S. Board on Geographic

"iy" in surnames (not Bokiy, Gorskiy, Agranovskiy, but Boky, Gorsky,

Agranovsky), and of "i" for "iy" signify a soft sign (in all possible

is

omitted.

combinations)

names (not Georgiy, Valeriy, The apostrophe ordinarily used to

in first

Yuriy, but Georgi, Valeri, Yuri).

The "y" between is

the letters "i" and "e"

omitted too (not Ageyev, Dmitriyevich,

but Ageev, Dmitrievich). In a few cases where a mildly deviant spelling of a well-known

Russian name has become firmly established in Western publications, we

have retained that version, Joseph

e.g.:

Khrushchev, Beria, Evdokia (Petrova),

(Stalin), Izvestia, Zinoviev,

and the names of Tsars.

xvii

Europe 1942

ALGERIA

Postwar Europe Political

boundaries after 1948

ALGERIA

KGB

Introduction

Most authors can tion,

expect, sooner or later, to

though they should not expect

Andrew's turn arrived

in

it

to

make an

happen

accurate predic-

often. Christopher

October 1985 with the publication of his book

Secret Service: The

Making of

While writing Secret

Service,

the British Intelligence

Community.

he had come to disbelieve the widespread

assumption, largely derived from worldwide media interest in the So-

Cambridge University (where Andrew teaches and defection remained more of a problem for the West than for the Kremlin. The career of Oleg Penkovsky, the Anglo-American mole in the GRU (Soviet military intelligence agency) who played a vital role in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, was, he suspected, far from unique. In what Andrew's family assures him was an uncharacteristic moment of clairvoyance, he wrote viet

moles educated

at

history), that high-level penetration

in the first edition of Secret Service: "It is unsafe to

have been no Penkovskys

since,

conclude that there

simply because their names have yet

was published, news broke of another and even more successful Penkovsky, this time in the KGB. His name was Oleg Gordievsky. A few months before he escaped from Russia in the summer of 1985, Gordievsky had been appointed KGB resident (head of station) to appear in the newspapers." Just before Secret Service 1

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

2

in

London. Since 1974 he had been working for SIS, the British Secret

known as MI6), as a penetration agent inside the KGB. In the summer of 1986 Gordievsky read Secret Service and got in touch with Andrew. As their discussions progressed over the next year, Andrew and Gordievsky were struck by the similarity of their interpretations of KGB operations. The recurrent obsession of the Intelligence Service (also

KGB,

since

its

foundation as the Cheka six weeks after the October

Revolution, with imaginary conspiracies as well as with real opponents

had become a major theme in Andrew's research. It was an obsession that Gordievsky had experienced at first hand. The most dramatic period in his career as a KGB officer had occurred in the early 1980s when the Kremlin became seriously alarmed by a nonexistent Western plan for a nuclear first strike. Gordievsky was closely involved in the largest intelligence operation in Soviet history, an unprecedented worldwide collaboration between the KGB and the GRU, code-named

RYAN,

which sought to uncover the West's nuclear plot by such methods as monitoring the stocks in British blood banks, the number of animals killed in slaughterhouses, and the frequency of meetings between Mrs. Thatcher and the Queen. bizarre

The main problem confronting tried to research the history of total inaccessibility,

all

historians

KGB

who,

like

foreign operations

even in the Gorbachev

era,

Andrew, had had been the

of the records of

its

foreign intelligence arm, the First Chief Directorate (FCD). Gor-

many of these records over a period of twenty-three way around that apparently insuperable problem. As

dievsky's access to

years offered a

Andrew

discovered at their

deep interest

in

KGB

first

meeting, Gordievsky had long had a

history as well as in

its

current operations. In

1980 he had been responsible for preparing the sections of a highly classified in-house history of the First

KGB operations in

Chief Directorate, dealing with

and Australasia. He had found the research more interesting than the writing. There were many things that it was politically impossible to say about foreign Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia,

intelligence operations even in a classified

tions apply to the present volume,

began collaborating it

in the late

KGB history. No such inhibi-

on which Andrew and Gordievsky

summer of 1987. KGB officers will find own in-house histories and, the authors

a good deal franker than their

more informative. Though this history has been written by Andrew, it is based on combined research, follows interpretations arrived at together in many hope,

Introduction

and represents the authors'

detailed discussions,

draws on the

3

KGB, on

secret archives of the

a wide variety of Western libraries

long experience of the

joint conclusions. It

other source material in

and archives, and on Gordievsky's

FCD and KGB residencies abroad. After a year's

training in 1962-63, Gordievsky spent nine years at the Center, the

KGB's Moscow

headquarters (1963-65 and 1970-72) and the Copen-

hagen residency (1966-70) organizing operations by

KGB

illegals

(agents operating under false identities and not protected by diplomatic

immunity). For the next thirteen years he worked in political

gence (PR)

in

intelli-

Copenhagen (1973-78), the Center (1978-82), and Lon-

don (1982-85).

The both the

decisive

moment

Gordievsky's growing alienation from

in

KGB and the Soviet system came in the summer of 1968 with Warsaw Pact and

the invasion of Czechoslovakia by forces of the

the

crushing of the freedoms that had begun to flower in the Prague Spring.

His ideas were similar to those that swept through Eastern Europe twenty years

later, in

the 1989 year of revolutions: the belief that the

Communist one-party in the

how

Brezhnev

to fight for

its

KGB officer,

for the West. officials.

to

intolerance,

in-

Like every Soviet dissident

opponents impotent. By the time he returned for

second tour of duty

him, as a

liberties.

era, however, Gordievsky had to face the dilemma of democracy within a political system that had become

expert at rendering his

inexorably

leads

state

humanity, and the destruction of

in

Copenhagen

the best

way

in 1973,

to carry

he had decided that for

on that

fight

was

to

work

Gordievsky began to look for contacts with Western

After a period of mutual sounding-out, he began full-time

collaboration with SIS late in 1974. In the course of Gordievsky's

widely and as deeply into

FCD

work

for the West, he delved as

records as was possible without unac-

KGB battle order has made of KGB residents in major Western

ceptable risk. His detailed research on possible the unprecedented

lists

capitals that appear as appendices to this volume.

long discussions with senior cials.

KGB

officers,

Gordievsky was frequently surprised

simply by sitting in the

offices

He

also

had many

diplomats, and Party at

how much he

offi-

learned

of important apparatchiks. All had desks

covered with the serried ranks of telephones that had become a muchprized Soviet status symbol. In the early 1980s Gordievsky paid regular visits to the office

of the deputy head of the

FCD

responsible for European intelligence

operations, Viktor Fyodorovich Grushko. In order to speak to

Grushko

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

4

for ten minutes,

Gordievsky sometimes had to spend over an hour

his office while the great

several of his

in

man dealt with major problems of the day over

dozen telephones. The most senior Party leader

whom

Gordievsky briefed on current problems was Mikhail Sergeevich Gorfirst visit to Britain in December 1984, months before becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, he was given three or four intelligence reports a day, most of them prepared by Gordievsky. Gorbachev also gave his views on some of the priorities affecting the future work of both the Soviet embassy and the KGB residency in London. He must later have reflected on the irony of being briefed for his first talks in Western Europe

bachev. During Gorbachev's three

by an intelligence

Among

working

officer

the aspects of

KGB

Andrew and Gordievsky

for SIS.

history that

had most interested both

before their collaboration began were the

Cambridge moles. Cambridge University, at which Andrew teaches, has the unique though dubious distinction of having provided some of the ablest twentieth-century recruits to both the British intelligence community and its main opponent, the KGB. (Contrary to the impression given by some accounts, however, British re-

careers of the

cruits

have been far more numerous.) After the release of the popular

Western film The Magnificent Seven recruits to the

in 1960, the leading

KGB became known in the Center as the

Five." Portraits of the recruiters and the

first

Cambridge

"Magnificent

Cam"Memory Room"

controllers of the

bridge moles have a place of honor in the secret

where the FCD commemorates its heroes. Gordievsky followed with particular interest the career of the most successful of the Magnificent Five, Kim Philby, who defected to

Moscow

in

January 1963 while he was

When

in the

middle of his

first-year

Copenhagen ten years later, Gordievsky bought a copy of a book by Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville, Philby: The Long Road to Moscow, and sent it to intelligence training course.

stationed in

Philby via a friend in the Center, Albert Ivanovich Kozlov. Philby read it

and returned

English on the

it

to

Gordievsky with the handwritten dedication

flyleaf:

To

my

Don V

dear colleague Oleg:

believe anything

which you see

about

me

in print!

Kim

Philby

in

Introduction

5

Gordievsky's view of Philby was indeed quite different from the glam-

KGB

orous image of the master spy that the print.

While on leave

in

Moscow

in 1977,

sought to popularize in

Gordievsky attended Philby's

lecture at the Center, given to an audience of about three hundred.

first

Philby spoke in English. 'This year," he began, "is a very special one.

Not only does Revolution;

mark

it

the sixtieth anniversary of the Great October

also sees the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet Football

it

Association." There were two bursts of laughter from the audience:

immediately from those

who understood

English, after the translation

from the remainder.

Having disarmed

his audience, Philby then

went on to make an

KGB

oblique but devastating criticism of his treatment by the the fourteen years since his defection. "In the course of said,

M

am

visiting

And now,

yours for the

During

his

at last, after fourteen years in

first

talents, Philby

Moscow,

time."

spasmodic meetings with Western journalists, even

on the rare occasions when he criticized the never revealed the

full

KGB's

neglect of his

He sought to KGB. During his

extent of his hurt.

give the impression that he held senior rank in the last

during

career," he

have visited the headquarters of some of the world's leading

I

intelligence services. I

my

interview with Phillip Knightley a few

months before

his death,

confirmed a report that he already held the rank of colonel of his defection. But

when asked by Knightley

view whether he had since become a

KGB

at the

he

time

same

inter-

general, he gave a

more

later in the

equivocal reply. "Strictly speaking," he told Knightley, "there are no military ranks in the

KGB,

but

I

do have the

privileges of a general."

KGB

(Gor-

dievsky was a colonel at the time of his defection), and there are

KGB

As Philby was generals. 2

well aware, there are military ranks in the

But to

his personal chagrin, Philby,

existence, never rose

Moscow

in

though he led a privileged

above the rank of "agent."

When

he arrived

in

January 1963, he confidently expected to be given a senior He was dismayed to discover for the first time that

post at the Center.

Western agents, however successful, were never allowed the

KGB. They

remained, like Philby, simple agents.

code name

in 1988, Philby's

As Philby Western agents.

When

rank

in

to his death

Center was Agent Tom.

late,

the

KGB

never fully trusts

its

January 1963, his closest friend Burgess, whose bizarre lifestyle upset the KGB even he defected

Moscow, Guy more than the Foreign

in

in the

discovered too

officer

Up

repeated requests to

in

was dying from alcoholism. Despite the Center, Philby was not allowed to see him Office,

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

6

before his death in August 1963. In his will Burgess

left

Philby his

some furniture, and £2000. Philby himself was always closely watched when he traveled to other Soviet Bloc countries. When he visited Cuba, he was required to travel by ship to library, his winter overcoats,

eliminate the minimal risk that he might change planes in transit.

During

his early years in

some of his disappointment

Moscow, Philby was

able to suppress

went through the lengthy, elaborate

as he

process of debriefing, recording every detail of every intelligence officer

and operation he had ever encountered, and dealing with supplementary questions. He was also encouraged to help ghostwrite the memoirs of the leading Soviet

Gordon

own

illegal in

postwar Britain,

Lonsdale), published in the

West

and

{alias

to prepare his

propagandist memoirs, eventually published after long delibera-

tion at the Center in 1969.

To compensate

he was given the consolation of a

series of

for his lack of officer rank,

awards from the intelligence

services of the Soviet Bloc, beginning with the

This

Konon Molody

in 1965,

made him, he

Order of Lenin

told Knightley, in effect a Soviet knight:

there are different sorts of Ks, but the Order of Lenin

is

in 1965.

"Of course

equivalent to

one of the better ones."

By

fallen into a

what

had had no idea

1967, however, with his debriefing complete, Philby

deep depression, convinced "that the

KGB

my real potential was." His private life too was falling apart. Moscow he formed

After

Donald Maclean, whom he had scarcely met since leaving Cambridge. That friendship ended in 1965 when Philby's third wife left him and Melinda Maclean moved in. Within a year or so that relationship too was on the rocks. Philby roamed around Russia on a series of almost suicidal drinking bouts, which sometimes left him oblivious of where he was, uncertain whether it was night or day. Unlike Donald Maclean, who eventually drank himself to death (though much more slowly than Burgess), Philby was rescued from alcoholic oblivion by Rufa, "the woman I had been waiting for all my life." They were married in 1971. arriving in

a friendship with

Contacts with Philby merely confirmed Gordievsky in his decision during the early 1970s to begin working for the West. Philby tried

desperately to persuade himself, as he looked over

windows of

his

flat,

the solid foundations of the future

Gordievsky

it

Moscow from

the

that he could, as he claimed in his memoirs, "see I

glimpsed at Cambridge." 3

To

seemed, on the contrary, that the gulf between the myth

image of the Soviet just society that had inspired Philby when he graduated from the university and the somber, stagnant reality of

Introduction

7

Brezhnev's Russia was unbridgeable. There were moments himself seemed to recognize the immensity of the gulf.

KGB

When

he

criti-

would commonly "I'm not responsible," thus provoking the retort from Philby:

cized failings of the Soviet system, reply:

when Philby

officers

"You're not responsible? Every Soviet citizen says he's not responsible.

The

truth

is

you're

Though West, fourth

all

responsible!"

the Center sought to popularize Philby's career in the

did not welcome the public exposure of

it

member

watched

in

Anthony

Blunt, the

of the Magnificent Five, in 1979. During the 1980s

it

bemusement the highly publicized hunt by the British media

for the Fifth

Man

along a series of false

trails.

Imaginary moles, as well

as genuine Soviet agents, multiplied alarmingly in a series of bestselling

books.

Among

those mistakenly accused were Frank Birch, Sefton

Delmer, Andrew Gow, Sir Roger Hollis, ell,

and Arthur Pigou,

all

Guy

Liddell,

Graham Mitch-

deceased; Sir Rudolf Peierls who, despite

claims that he too was dead, turned out to be alive and sued successfully for libel;

Lord Rothschild, the victim

endo rather than open accusation,

until his death in

in case

1990 of innu-

he also sued; and Dr. Wilfred

Mann, who did not sue but published a convincing explanation of his By the end of the 1980s, the hunt for the Fifth Man had begun to resemble Monty Python's quest for the Holy Grail. 4 innocence.

Had

the

KGB been less addicted to conspiracy theory,

it

might

have welcomed the confusion generated by the media mole hunt and

damage done by

MI5, which became the butt was an outstation of the KGB. Instead, there were frequent suggestions in the Center that the whole mole hunt was some sinister British plot. Gordievsky had just moved to the British desk in the Third Department in 1981 when Chapman Pincher's sensational allegation that Sir Roger Hollis, director-general of MI5 from 1956 to 1965, was a Soviet mole burst onto the front pages the

it

to the reputation of

of numerous jokes suggesting that

it

of the British press. 5

Gordievsky had already researched the history of Soviet penetration of Britain while

working on the 1980

FCD official history. After

the accusations against Hollis, however, he spent hours discussing the

case with Ivan Aleksandrovich Shishkin, head of Faculty (Counterintelligence) at the tute.

FCD training school,

Shishkin was one of the

FCD's

the

Number Two

Andropov

Insti-

leading British specialists and had

London as deputy resident and head of the KR (counterintelLondon from 1966 to 1970. He was adamant that there was not a word of truth in the allegations against Hollis. One of Gorserved in

ligence) line in

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

8

dievsky's friends in the Center, Albert Kozlov, section chief in the

Third Department, had also investigated the Hollis case. missed

it

He

too dis-

as absurd.

In 1984 the Hollis story once again hit British headlines after

him were repeated

the charges against

Wright, a retired

MI 5

officer

in a television interview

by Peter

with a penchant for conspiracy theory,

who had been

the main source for Chapman Pincher's allegations three At the time Gordievsky was on leave in Moscow in the middle of his London posting. He read a KGB telegram about Wright's allegations when visiting the head of the British desk, Igor Viktorovich

years earlier.

PR

Titov, formerly in charge of the

line (Political Intelligence) in

London and deputy resident there until his expulsion in the previous "The story is ridiculous," Titov told him. "There's some mysterious, internal British intrigue at the bottom of all this." Dmitri Anyear.

dreevich Svetanko, consultant and a former deputy head of the

FCD

Third Department, agreed.

Gordievsky found

it

deeply ironic that British media interest in

an imaginary Soviet mole should reach

when

the level of real

KGB

over half a century. The

its

peak

at the very

moment

penetration in Britain was lower than for

London residency

files

indicated that the

KGB

had had no source inside either MI 5 or SIS since the arrest of George Blake in 1961. of the reasons

It

seems never to have occurred to Peter Wright that one

why

the government dismissed the charges against Hollis

with such confidence was that SIS had the

its

own

well-placed source inside

KGB.

Gordievsky's career as an intelligence

climax in 1985. agent.

And

He had

yet at the

officer

reached an astonishing

completed eleven years as an SIS penetration

same time

As head

his reputation in

PR

Moscow Center had

and deputy resident in London since 1983, his political reporting had won high praise. The briefings he provided during Gorbachev's visit in December 1984 set the seal on his success in London. In January 1985 he was summoned to the Center and told that he had been appointed London resident to never stood higher.

take over

when

of the

line

the acting resident, Leonid Yefremovich Nikitenko,

Moscow

in May. During his visit to the Center, Gordievsky was initiated into the resident's personal ciphers needed for top-secret communications with Moscow.

returned to

On

Friday,

May

17, 1985,

London, summoning him back

to

Gordievsky received a telegram

Moscow

in

to be officially confirmed as

Introduction

9

London

resident. But for his ability to surmount the crisis that folGordievsky lowed, would not have survived, and this book could not have been written. On the face of it, despite the short notice, there was

a

nothing suspicious about the telegram.

was

to

of the

It informed Gordievsky that he have discussions with Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov, chairman

KGB

and member of the Politburo, and with General Vladimir

Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov, long-serving head of the First Chief Directorate,

who was

to succeed

Chebrikov as chairman

in 1988.

Viktor Ivanovich Popov, the irascible Soviet ambassador in

London, was all

clearly impressed.

On

reading the telegram, Popov was

smiles. Despite earlier clashes with Gordievsky,

how

he gave him avun-

him Moscow. Gordievsky's sixth sense as an intelligence officer, however, told him that something was wrong. As he read the telegram, he felt a cold sweat in his palms, and his vision briefly clouded over. Soon after his talk with Popov a second telegram arrived briefing Gordievsky on the subjects Chebrikov and Kryuchkov would want to discuss with him. Gordievsky had the sense of a carefully baited trap awaiting him in Moscow. He told himself that the stress of his double life must be making him oversuspicious. Professional pride as a dedicated British penetration agent in the KGB persuaded him to suppress his doubts and return to Moscow. Saturday, May 18, was one of the most hectic days in Gordievsky's three years at the London residency. As well as making

cular advice on

to handle the important meetings that awaited

in

arrangements for his departure and preparing briefings for Chebrikov

and Kryuchkov, he had to deliver £5,000 to a KGB illegal. A residency technician had constructed an imitation brick with a hollow center just big enough to contain a plastic packet stuffed with 250 £20 notes. Gordievsky placed the brick in a plastic carrier bag and took his two small daughters, Maria and Anna, to play in Coram's Fields in Bloomsbury, near the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. While playing with the

girls,

Gordievsky dropped the brick on a grassy verge

between a path and a fence on the northern edge of the park. On Sunday morning, May 19, Gordievsky was picked up from his apartment in Kensington High Street by a Soviet embassy Ford

Granada and driven

to

Heathrow

to catch the Aeroflot flight to

Mos-

cow. Since the trip was supposed to be a short one, his family stayed

London. At Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport he had his first clear indication that something was wrong. The KGB immigration officer in

took some time checking his diplomatic passport, then in Gordievsky's

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

10

presence

made

a telephone call to report his arrival.

mildly ominous that there was no

KGB

also

It

seemed

car to meet him, though he

to the wrong The driver already had two who turned out to be West German diplomats return-

later discovered that a car

had been sent but had gone

terminal. Gordievsky took a taxi instead.

other passengers,

Moscow

ing to their

flat.

When

Gordievsky

identified himself as a

West Germans became visibly agitated, apparently fearing some sort of trap, and asked to be driven straight to their embassy. Gordievsky wondered whether the KGB watchers outside the embassy would find it suspicious that he was in a taxi with two West Soviet diplomat, the

German

diplomats.

When

he got back to his apartment at 109 Leninsky Prospekt, it had been searched. He and two of the three locks on the door. This time

he knew even before opening the door that his wife Leila used only

he found

all

three locked. "Typical," thought Gordievsky.

KGB house-

breakers were technically highly proficient but notoriously heavy drinkers

and given

to lapses in concentration.

sign of disturbance.

On

he found a small hole tissues,

A first inspection

revealed no

a second look around the bathroom, however,

in the

cellophane covering an unopened box of

where a probe had been

Gordievsky knew that the

inserted.

search of the apartment would have uncovered no clues except a pile of books purchased in the West (including virtually the complete works of Solzhenitsyn) and hidden beneath his bed; though seditious, they

were of the kind purchased

unofficially

still

officially

by many Soviet

diplomats. Before going to bed, he called the head of the Third Depart-

ment in the First Chief Directorate, Nikolai Petrovich Gribin, to announce his return. Gribin said little, but his tone of voice seemed cooler than usual.

Next morning, Monday, May 20, a junior KGB officer, Vladimir Chernov, who had been expelled from Britain two years earlier, arrived at the apartment in his Lada to drive Gordievsky to the First Chief Directorate building at Yasenevo, near the Moscow ring road. Gordievsky was given a vacant room in the Third Department. When

he asked about the promised meetings with Chebrikov and Kryuchkov, he was told to wait. "You'll be informed when they're ready to see you." For a week nothing happened. Gordievsky waited each day until

about 8 p.m. for a telephone

call to fix the

a series of excuses. Kryuchkov, he a series of conferences at mittee;

KGB

was

meetings but was given only

told,

had a very busy week with

headquarters and at the Central

Chebrikov could not see him

until

he had

first

Com-

met Kryuchkov.

Introduction

Gordievsky operations,

filled in

11

the time improving his briefs on Britain and

and checking

statistics

KGB

on the British economy and armed

forces.

Gribin tried to persuade Gordievsky to spend the weekend with

him and

his wife at a

KGB

could see his mother and

To Gribin's visible irritation GorMoscow apartment instead so that he

dacha.

dievsky insisted on staying in his

Most of the weekend conversation was first year at the Church Kensington High Street, and Gordievsky

sister.

about his family in London. Maria was in her of England primary school in

was proud of her English. He

come home one day and

told his

mother and

sister

how

she had

recited, in perfect English, the Lord's Prayer.

in Moscow was more eventful At about noon on Monday, May 27, he received a phone call in his room at the Third Department from General Grushko, deputy head of the First Chief Directorate, to tell him he was being summoned to an important meeting to discuss a new strategy for Soviet penetration of Britain with high-level agents. They were driven in

Gordievsky's second week back

than the

first.

Grushko's black Volga limousine to a

where a sandwich lunch was waiting

KGB

dacha a few miles away,

for them.

"What about

a drink?"

asked Grushko. Gordievsky hesitated for a moment, remembering Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign. But since Grushko seemed to expect it,

he accepted.

A

servant produced a half-liter bottle of

Armenian

brandy and poured them a glass each.

To

Gordievsky's surprise, Grushko began asking questions

about his family. In the middle of the sandwiches, they were joined by

General Golubev and Colonel Budanov of Directorate intelligence),

nal leaks.

A

whose

(Counter-

second bottle of Armenian brandy was produced, and filled

from

he had been drugged. "I

felt,"

Gordievsky's glass

He began

K

responsibilities included the investigation of inter-

talking quickly

Almost immediately, he realized that he recalls, "that I was a different man."

it.

and garrulously, conscious that one part of

to lose control while another part told him beyond him. As his head spun, he noticed Grushko leave the room while Golubev and Budanov began to fire questions his

mind was urging him not

the effort might be

at

him.

Gordievsky was asked for

his assessment of previous Soviet

French mole, code-named Farewell by Directorate T (responsible for scientific and

defectors, in particular about a

the French, in the

FCD

technological espionage),

who had

Then the questioning became more

been executed two years

personal.

"How

could you

earlier.

listen to

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

12

your daughter saying the Lord's Prayer?" he was suddenly asked. "I

know I'm drugged and

finding

it

hard to think straight," Gordievsky

means they listened in on my conversation with my mother and sister on the weekend. So my flat must be bugged." Next, Gordievsky was challenged about the works of Solzhenitsyn and Western publications beneath his bed. "How could you bring those anti-Soviet books over the border?" he was asked. The next stage of the interrogation was much more aggressive. Gordievsky was directly accused of working for the British. He was told himself, "but that

name of a British diplomat. "That's the man who recruited demanded Golubev. "You saw your British friends before you returned to Moscow, didn't you?" Then Gordievsky was left by himself. Some time later Golubev returned. "Confess now!" he told Gordievsky. "Don't you remember? You confessed a moment ago. given the

you, isn't it?"

Confess again!" Gordievsky

felt his

head

reeling,

and heard himself as

if

from a distance, denying that he had any confession to make. "No,

I

didn't," he repeated mechanically.

"No,

didn't."

I

He remembered

nothing more until he woke up next morning with a splitting headache in

one of the dacha bedrooms.

Two coffee.

dacha servants, one male, one female, were ready with

Gordievsky drank cup

he began to

"I'm done

after cup, but the

day

recall the events of the previous

There's no

way

headache remained. As his first

thought was:

glimmer of hope returned. At about 9:30 a.m. Golubev and Budanov arrived at the for.

dacha, acting as

if

out." Gradually, however, a

the interrogation on the previous day had been

simply an after-dinner conversation. Golubev soon departed but Buda-

nov remained.

Though Gordievsky remembers Budanov sinister

KGB

harmless.

officers

he ever met, his

At some point

stationed in Britain.

first

in his career

"What

parts of

as one of the

most

questions seemed relatively

Budanov had

evidently been

England have you visited?" he

asked. Gordievsky replied that because of the usual restrictions Soviet diplomats (or side

London,

KGB

his trips

on

posing as diplomats) traveling out-

officers

had been largely confined to party conferences and Harrogate. "Harrogate?" said Budanov.

in Blackpool, Brighton,

"Never heard of overconfident continued:

it."

Then

last night,"

"You

his tone changed.

he

said.

also told us that

"You were

arrogant and

Gordievsky apologized. Budanov

we

are recreating the atmosphere of

the purges, renewing the witch hunt and spy

mania of 1937. That

is

not

13

Introduction

true. In

time

I

shall

shortly to drive

Back

prove to you that you are wrong.

you home."

in his

apartment, Gordievsky telephoned Grushko. "I'm

come

sorry I'm not well enough to

began.

Grushko accepted

his excuse.

into the department today," he

"I'm also sorry

if I

out of turn yesterday," he continued, "but those two

along were very strange."

"On

Grushko knew

Gordievsky spent the recovering at ing."

home last

stilted but,

Gordievsky

re-

was being recorded. Tuesday and the whole of Wednesday

that their conversation

rest of

own

and, in his

By Wednesday evening,

events of the

said anything

men who came

the contrary," replied Grushko, "they're

very nice people." The phrase sounded flected,

A car will come

two days and

words, "thinking, thinking, think-

had

his depression

lifted slightly.

his success so far in resisting the

The

charges

him suggested that he might be given a breathing space before sentence of death was passed on him. "Maybe, after all," he thought, "I can find some way out." A generation earlier he would simply have been liquidated. Nowadays the KGB had to have evidence. On Thursday, May 30, Gordievsky returned to his room in the Third Department. Soon he was summoned to Grushko's office, where he found Grushko flanked by Golubev and a glum-looking Gribin, Gordievsky's department head. Grushko told him: against

all day with ComYou know that you've been deceiving us for a long time. That's why your mission in Great Britain will be terminated. Your family is returning to Moscow immedi-

Yesterday we discussed your case almost rade Kryuchkov.

But we've decided you can continue to work in the KGB, though probably not in the First Chief Directorate.

ately.

What's your reaction to that? Gordievsky had no doubt that the proposal was simply a ruse intended to give

him just enough rope

to

hang

himself.

He was under suspended

sentence of death but, since the interrogation in the dacha had been a

was being put under surveillance and given a period at liberty which it was hoped he would be detected trying to contact British

failure,

in

intelligence or

would provide other compromising evidence. With the

advantage of hindsight, he saw that the emphasis put by General Golubev on trivia such as Maria's Lord's Prayer and the books beneath his

bed seemed to show that the case against him rested so far chiefly on circumstantial evidence.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

14

Since his only chance of survival was to play for time, Gor-

dievsky decided to show himself as cooperative as possible.

He

apolo-

gized for falling asleep during his questioning in the dacha. "I think,"

he

must have been something wrong

said, disingenuously, "that there

with the food." General Golubev, whose sense of the absurd was defective

even by the standards of the

KGB,

indignantly disagreed.

He

defended the quality of the dacha lunch sandwich by sandwich. "The

ham was

good," he maintained. "The salmon roe was also very good.

So was the cheese." Gordievsky did not challenge Golubev's eulogy of the sandwiches.

don't

"As

know what

for accusations about

you're talking about. But

the First Chief Directorate

and a gentleman." In like

my

is

work," he continued, "I

if

to be terminated,

found

retrospect, he

you decide I'll

take

it

my work

like

an

in

officer

his use of that final phrase,

Golubev's defense of the sandwiches, a mildly comic interlude

in

a desperate struggle for survival.

General Grushko seemed relieved by Gordievsky's response

and glad

to avoid the

embarrassment of either an open admission or a

vigorous denial of treason in his

Gordievsky and shook

office.

his hand.

to deliver the "anti-Soviet

He

"Thank you, thank you," he

did,

however, instruct Gordievsky

books" beneath

Had Gordievsky

told

his

bed to the First Chief

trial, they would no doubt have been featured as an exhibit. Gribin, the Third Department chief who a few months before had been full of praise for Gordievsky's work, avoided shaking his hand. "I don't know what to suggest," he said. "Just take it in a philosophical way." After his escape to England, Gordievsky thought of calling Gribin to tell him, "I took your advice. I took it in a philosophical way." Gordievsky was given leave until August 3. He calculated that the cat-and-mouse game would continue at least until the end of his leave. He spent a bittersweet fortnight during June with Leila, Maria, and Anna in their Moscow apartment, his enjoyment of family life made more intense by knowledge of the separation that would follow. The rest of the family planned to leave for Leila's father's dacha in Transcaucasia on June 20. Gordievsky longed to go with them. But, knowing that he would need time to organize his escape, he accepted instead a place that was offered him in a KGB "sanatorium" (a kind of holiday hotel) at Semyonovskoye, once the location of Stalin's second dacha, a hundred kilometers south of Moscow. Shortly before he left, a former colleague from the same block of apartments, Boris Bocharov, asked him: "What happened in London, old chap? We had to recall all

Directorate library.

been brought to

Introduction

Our

the illegals.

operations are ruined.

15

I

heard a rumor that your

deputy has defected." Next time he met Gordievsky, Bocharov had clearly been

warned and avoided speaking

Gordievsky spent exercise, reading,

rium had

and planning

to share their

roommate was

a

KGB

to him.

KGB sanatorium taking gentle

his time at the

his escape.

Most

guests at the sanato-

rooms. By accident or design, Gordievsky's

border guard. The surveillance carried out by

KGB

personnel was a good deal less sophisticated than in the Whenever Gordievsky went jogging, he noticed the same watchers pretending to urinate into the same bushes and using other conspicuous forms of concealment. He privately nicknamed one local local

capital.

KGB

man

with an apparently inexhaustible bladder Inspector Clou-

Gordievsky studied what maps and

seau. In the sanatorium library

guides he could of the frontier region that he planned to cross, but he did so standing at the shelves in order not to attract attention by taking

them

to read in his

room.

He made

unrelated to his escape plans. before he

left

a point of borrowing books entirely

The

KGB officer to speak to him him what on earth he was doing

last

the sanatorium asked

War of 1877-78. Gordievsky was replied that he filling gaps in his historical knowledge. Since his escape that book will have been searched in vain for clues by Moscow reading a book on the Russo-Turkish

Center.

Gordievsky's family's departure for the Transcaucasus was unexpectedly postponed until June 30, and his children were able to

him for a day. It was the last time he saw Maria and Anna. When came to an end and he put them on the train back to Moscow, he hugged them for so long that he only just managed to squeeze visit

the day

through the

train's sliding

Twice during pretexts to visit

doors as

it left

his stay in the

Moscow

in

the station.

sanatorium Gordievsky found

order to contact SIS.

He

covered the ten

miles to the nearest station on foot, using the long walk to plan the even

longer walk on the frontier that would be part of his escape route.

Remarkably,

his contacts with SIS in

unobserved by the

KGB. On

Moscow seem

to have

gone

of his visits he saw his wife for and Anna were spending the day in his mother's dacha near Moscow). He said goodbye to Leila in a Moscow supermarket, where they went shopping before Gordievsky caught the train back to the sanatorium. It was one of the most poithe

first

the last time before his escape (Maria

gnant moments in Gordievsky's

life.

was that Leila could not know the

What made

significance

it

it

almost unbearable

held for them both.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

16

She kissed him

briefly

on the

lips.

Gordievsky

tried to smile.

himself saying softly, "That might have been a dievsky has remembered those words

many

bit

He found

more tender." Gor-

times since his escape. So,

no doubt, has Leila. The hardest part of the preparations for his escape was his inability to take his family into his confidence, and the knowledge that his escape might be followed by several years of separation. The alternative to separation, however, was a few more weeks of freedom followed by execution as a traitor and even greater heartbreak for his family.

On Wednesday, sanatorium to his his escape to the

KGB

July 10, Gordievsky returned from the

KGB

Moscow apartment. During the fortnight or so before

West he

laid a series of false trails intended to confuse

and week following his intended departure from Moscow. He also spent a good deal of time working on his unreliable Lada car to prepare it for a compulsory technical inspection. Gordievsky's watchers were used to seeing him leave his apartment on Leninsky Prospekt to go jogging and did not usually follow him on his runs. At 4 p.m. on Friday, July 19, he went jogging, wearing his usual old trousers and a sweatshirt, and carrying a plastic bag whose contents must later have caused intense speculation at the Center. Gordievsky never returned from his run. A few days later, after a complicated surveillance, arranging several meetings with his friends

relatives for the

journey, he crossed the Soviet frontier. Since others

may have

to leave

Union by the same route, he is unwilling to identify it. Gordievsky compares his sensation on reaching safety in the West to the moment in The Wizard ofOz when the film changes from black-and-white to Technicolor. Against all the odds, he had escaped certain execution by the KGB. For the first time in Soviet history, a KGB officer already identified as a Western mole had escaped across the Russian border. But even as Gordievsky was being congratulated by his friends, his first thoughts were for the family he had had to leave behind. The KGB still takes hostages. As this book goes to press, Leila, Maria, and Anna are among them. They are remembered in the authe Soviet

thors' dedication.

1 Tsarist Origins

(1565-1917)

Russia's

first

political police, the distant ancestor of today's

the Oprichnina, founded in 1565 by Ivan the Terrible, the

Duke

KGB, was first

Grand

crowned Tsar. The six thousand Oprichniki dressed in black, rode on black horses, and carried on their saddles the emblems of a dog's head and a broom, symbolizing their mission to sniff out and sweep away treason. As in Stalin's Russia, most of the treason that they swept away existed only in the minds of the Oprichniki and their ruler. Their victims included whole cities, chief among them Novgorod, most of whose inhabitants were massacred in a five-week of

Muscovy

to be

orgy of cruelty in 1570. Ivan himself oscillated between periods of

barbarous sadism and periods of prayer and repentance. After a sevenyear reign of terror, the Oprichnina was abolished in 1572. Almost four centuries later the victims of Stalin's

NKVD

sometimes called their

persecutors Oprichniki behind their backs. Stalin praised the "progressive role" of the

the at

Oprichnina in centralizing state power and reducing

power of the boyar

aristocracy, but criticized Ivan for wasting time

prayer that could have been better spent liquidating more boyars.

The next powerful organization founded

to deal with political

crime was Peter the Great's Preobrazhensky Prikaz, tiously at the

1

set up so surreptiend of the seventeenth century that the exact date of its

17

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

18

foundation

still

remains a mystery. Like the Oprichnina, the Preobra-

zhensky Prikaz foreshadowed, on a smaller

scale, the climate

of fear

who perished chambers ranged from nobles who had tried insignificant drunks who had dared to make

and denunciation engendered by Stalin's Terror. Those in its cellars

and torture

to evade state service to

jokes about the Tsar. 2 Peter

remembered today both

and whose new capital of St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) was intended "to open a window onto Europe." But he was also a ruler of fearsome cruelty. His son and heir, the Tsarevich Aleksei, who fled abroad, was lured back to Russia and tortured to death. outside the Soviet

Union

is

chiefly

as the

modernizer of the Russian

inside

state,

Like Ivan's Oprichnina, Peter's Preobrazhensky Prikaz did not survive

its

creator.

tently, there

Though

political persecution

was no further attempt

to

continued intermit-

found a specialized

political

police until after the unsuccessful Decembrist Rising of 1825, a century after Peter's death.

movement. Unlike Tsar but

The Decembrists were

earlier rebels, they

Russia's

at replacing the

—

new political system either a republic or a monarchy in which serfdom would be abolished. In

at creating a

constitutional

revolutionary

first

aimed not simply

—

1826, in order to forestall further risings, Tsar Nicholas

I

(1825-55)

established the Third Section of his Imperial Chancellery as his political police.

3

Both Nicholas and the Third Section's first head, Count Benckfrom the brutal precedents of the Oprichnina and Preobrazhensky Prikaz. The incongruous symbol of the Third Section was a handkerchief allegedly presented by the Tsar and preserved in a glass case in its archives. According to a pious but plausible tradition, Nicholas told Benckendorff, "Here is your whole

endorff, sought to distance themselves

The more tears you wipe away with this handkerchief, the more faithfully will you serve my aims." This eccentric metaphor suited

directive.

both the Tsar's grandiloquent self-image as "father-commander" of his people and the Third Section's view of itself as the "moral physician" of the nation. But the major preoccupation of the Third Section was

what the all its

KGB later called "ideological subversion": political dissent in KGB today, in order to keep track of dissent,

forms. Like the

believed

it

it

necessary to monitor public opinion. Benckendorff prepared

annual Surveys of Public Opinion, later entitled "The Moral and cal Situation in Russia." "Public opinion," declared the "is for the

mand

in

government what a topographical

time of war."

map

is

for

Politi-

1827 survey,

an army com-

19

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

In addition to employing a large network of informers, the head

of the Third Section also had under him a Corps of Gendarmes, several

thousand strong, charged with safeguarding state security and immedi-

and white gloves. Yet, by KGB was a small organization. Its headquarters apparat grew slowly from sixteen at its founding to forty by Nicholas ately recognizable

by

their blue tunics

standards, the Third Section

I's

death in 1855. The Third Section's heads lacked the personal brutal-

ity

of earlier political police chiefs. Alexander Herzen, the leading

political dissident of the

believe

.

.

.

post-Decembrist generation, was "ready to

that Benckendorff did not

done as head of that terrible law, which had the right to good

either;

do

all

the

harm he might have law and above the

police, being outside the

interfere in everything.

.

.

.

But he did no

he had not enough will-power, energy or heart for that."

When summoned

into Benckendorffs presence in 1 840, Herzen found "worn and tired," with "that deceptively good-natured expres4 sion which is often found in evasive and apathetic persons." Count Aleksei Orlov, who succeeded Benckendorff after his death in 1844, was his face

the brother of the leading Decembrist, General Mikhail Orlov. difficult

to

It is

imagine Stalin a century later allowing any relative of

Trotsky or Bukharin even to enter the

NKVD,

let

alone to become

its

head.

Of the 290,000

people sentenced to Siberian exile or hard labor

between 1823 and 1861, only

5 percent

had been found

guilty of politi-

and many of these were not Russian dissidents but Polish patriots opposed to Russian rule. Within Russia political dissidence was cal offenses,

still

virtually confined to a disaffected section of the educated

upper

The reign of Nicholas I nonetheless institutionalized political crime. The 1845 Criminal Code laid down draconian penalties for all class.

"persons guilty of writing and spreading written or printed works or representations intended to arouse disrespect for Sovereign Authority,

or for the personal qualities of the Sovereign, or for his government."

That code, writes Richard Pipes, is "to totalitarianism what the Magna Carta is to liberty." From 1845 to 1988, save for the period between the failed revolution of 1905 and the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, it remained a crime to question the existing political order.

The Criminal Code of 1960 punished

for the purpose of subverting or

"agitation or propaganda

weakening Soviet authority" by prison terms of up to seven years, with up to five further years of exile. Tsarism bequeathed to Bolshevism both a political culture and a legal system in which only the state had rights. 5

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

20

The Third

Section prided itself on the fact that during 1848, the

main nineteenth-century year of revolution in Western Europe, Russia remained "somnolent and at rest." The ferment in the countryside that followed the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 by Tsar Alexander

II

(1855-81) persuaded a generation of young upper-class Populists that the peasants were at last ripe for revolution. But the failure of the 1874

Pilgrimage to the People, in which earnest radical idealists toured the countryside striving vainly to rouse the peasants against Tsarism,

turned some disillusioned Populists to terrorism. The advocates of terror argued that assassination of Tsarist notables

regime and demonstrate

alize the

its

would both demor-

vulnerability to the peasants in a

terrorists, who by 1879 had banded themselves together as the Executive Committee of the People's Will, were only about thirty strong. But in a three-year campaign of bombing and assassination from 1878 to 1881 they brought the

form they could understand. The hard core of

regime close to panic, and in so doing exposed the inadequacies of the

Third Section. In 1878 General Mezentsov, chief of the gendarmes and

head controller of the Third Section, was stabbed to death

in

broad

daylight in one of the main streets of St. Petersburg. His escort, Lieuten-

ant Colonel Makarov, was so ill-prepared that he succeeded only in striking the assassin with his umbrella.

several further assassinations

was formally condemned

The

assassin escaped. After

and attempts on the

to death

life

of the Tsar,

who

by the People's Will, an investigation

into the functioning of the Third Section revealed so

many

lapses in

security that the Tsar "could not consider himself safe in his

own

residence." 6

In August 1880 the discredited Third Section was abolished and replaced by a new Department of State Police (renamed in 1883 simply the Department of Police), responsible for all aspects of state

crime was made the responsibility of a Special Department (Osobyi Otdel) within Police Headquarters and of a regional network of Security Sections (Okhrannoye Otdelenie), the first of which

security. Political

were

set

up

collectively

to save

in 1881.

known

Alexander

political police system became Okhrana. The reorganization failed, however, who was assassinated in 1881 with a crudely

Henceforth the

as the II,

constructed hand grenade.

The Okhrana was unique

in the Europe of its time in both the powers and the scope of its activities. Other European police forces operated under the law. The Okhrana, however, was a law unto itself. In matters of political crime it had the right to search, to

extent of

its

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

imprison, and to exile on

its

own

21

The

authority.

basic difference be-

liberal convert from was "the omnipotence of the political police" on which Tsarism depended for its survival. Tsarist Russia, however, never became a full-fledged police state. By subsequent Soviet standards, the enormous powers of the Okhrana were used on only a

tween Russia and the

rest of

Marxism, Peter Struve,

modest

scale.

Europe, wrote the

in 1903,

Even during the repression of the 1880s, only seventeen

people were executed for political crimes sassinations.

Among

the terrorists

—

actual or attempted as-

all

who went

to the scaffold

ander Ulyanov, condemned to death for his part to kill

der

Alexander

III

on March

II's assassination.

(better

known by

1,

his later alias,

By

1887, the sixth anniversary of Alexan-

Lenin)

is

said to have

sworn vengeance

1901, 4,113 Russians were in internal

exile for political crimes, 180 of far the

was Alex-

an unsuccessful plot

Ulyanov's seventeen-year-old brother Vladimir

against the Tsarist regime.

By

in

them

at

most persecuted group

hard labor. in the

7

Russian Empire was

the Jews. Popular anti-Semitism, state-encouraged pogroms, disabling

and multiple forms of discrimination during the reigns of Alexan-

laws,

der III (1881-94) and Nicholas

II

(1894-1917) led to the exodus of

The regime, downward, found the Jews from the Tsar a convenient scapegoat on whom to focus popular discontents. The sudden expulsion of almost several million Russian Jews, mainly to the United States.

thirty

thousand Jews from

Moscow

at

Passover 1891

set a

precedent

for Stalin's

much

Though

Okhrana did not originate state-sponsored anti-Semitism, it. The Okhrana official Komissarov received an

it

the

larger-scale deportation of other ethnic minorities.

helped to implement

official

reward of 10,000 rubles for inciting

anti- Jewish riots

pamphlets printed on Police Department presses. 8 The

last

with

head of the

Okhrana, A. T. Vasilyev, self-righteously condemned as "base slander" "excited newspaper articles" in the West that accused the Tsarist gov-

ernment and the Okhrana of conniving at the pogroms. He explained in his memoirs that the "core of the evil" was the "unfortunate inaptitude of the Jews for healthy productive work":

The government would never have had

the slightest reason

to adopt measures directed against the

Jews had not these

been rendered imperative by the necessity for protecting the Russian population, and especially the peasants.

was a

certain kind of oppression of the

unfortunately, this

was

far

Jews

from being as

.

.

.

There

in Russia, but,

effective as

it

ought

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

22

to have been.

The Government did seek

to protect the peas-

ants from the ruthless exploitation of the Jews; but

bore only too

little fruit.

State-sponsored anti-Semitism helps to explain

more

rapidly

among

The

action

why Marxism

spread

other ethnic group in

Marxist party with a mass following

first

was the Jewish Bund, founded

among

among any

the Jews than

the Russian Empire.

its

9

1897. Jews were prominent also

in

the founders of both the Russian Social Democratic Workers'

Party, the

main Marxist grouping,

in 1898,

and the

Socialist

Revolu-

The growing fueled the Okh-

tionary Party, the successor of the Populists, in 1902.

Jewish presence in the revolutionary leadership further 10

rana's anti-Semitism.

Despite the Jewish origins of

many "Old

Bolsheviks," anti-

Semitism was to reemerge, usually in disguise, under

Okhrana, the

KGB has promoted no pogroms.

But

anti-Semitic section of the Soviet establishment.

klatura as a whole

it

Stalin.

Unlike the

remains the most

Though

the nomen-

almost closed to Jews, the Foreign Ministry and

is

Central Committee are normally prepared to consider candidates of half- Jewish descent.

of some

KGB

KGB

The

officers

is

not.

Behind the recurrent obsession

with Zionist conspiracies and "ideological sub-

version" lurk remnants of the anti-Semitic myths propagated by the

Okhrana. In January 1985, L.

P.

Zamoysky, deputy head of the

Directorate of Intelligence Information, a

man

FCD

with a reputation for

both intelligence and good judgment, solemnly assured the London

KGB residency, in Gordievsky's presence, that the Freemasons, whose rites,

he was convinced, were of Jewish origin, were part of the great

Zionist conspiracy. 11

KGB training manuals and lecture courses are understandably reluctant to acknowledge any continuities between the

KGB

in their

Okhrana and

treatment of political criminals or Jewish dissidents.

Rather greater recognition is given to the Okhrana's foreign intelligence work. 12 The main priority of the Okhrana abroad was the surveillance of Russian emigres, nowadays conducted by line officers in

dents,

among

each

KGB

residency.

which had begun with Herzen's

exile in 1847,

the Populist generation of the 1870s.

II there

were almost

KR (Counterintelligence)

The emigration of

By

political dissi-

gathered pace

the reign of Nicholas

thousand revolutionary emigres preparing for the overthrow of Tsarism by methods ranging from making bombs to five

research in the Reading

Room

of the British

Museum.

13

23

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

Agency (Zagranichnaya Agentura), set up for the surveillance of the emigres, was 14 located in the Russian embassy in Paris, the main emigre center. According to French Surete records, the Foreign Agency began work 15 By 1884 it was fully in Paris, probably on a small scale, in 1882.

The headquarters of

the Okhrana's Foreign

operational, under the direction of the formidable Pyotr Rachkovsky.

During the Populist era Rachkovsky had been a minor

civil

servant

with revolutionary sympathies. In 1879 he was arrested by the Third Section and given the option of exile in Siberia or a career in the political police.

most

Rachkovsky chose the

latter

and went on to become the

influential foreign intelligence officer in the history of Tsarist

Russia. Unlike later

KGB

residents in Paris, he

figure in Parisian high society,

was

also a prominent

accumulating a fortune by speculation

on the Bourse, entertaining lavishly

in his villa at St.

Cloud, and num-

bering directors of the Surete, ministers, and presidents intimates.

A writer in the newspaper Echo de Paris

If ever

you

you meet him

in society,

I

very

will feel the slightest misgivings

in his

appearance reveals his

always with a smile on his genial, jolly fellow

his

much doubt whether

about him, for nothing

sinister function. Fat, restless,

lips ...

on a spree. ...

he looks more

He

like

some

has one rather notice-

—that he passionately fond of our Pari—but he the most operator be found

able weakness

siennes

among

said of him in 1901:

little

is

is

skillful

to

in

the ten capitals of Europe. 16

Rachkovsky and his successors as heads of the Foreign Agency enjoyed much the same status as the heads or deputy heads of the Okhrana in St.

Petersburg, as well as considerable freedom of action. Like the

Okhrana within Russia, the Foreign Agency employed both "external" surveillance (by plainclothes detectives, concierges, and others) and "internal" penetration (by police spies, some of whom had begun as genuine revolutionaries) against Russian emigres. 17 So, far from objecting to Foreign Agency operations on French soil, the Surete welcomed them as a means of extending its own intelligence gathering. A Surete report concluded on the eve of the First World War: It is

impossible, on any objective assessment, to deny the

usefulness of having a Russian police operating in Paris,

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

24

whether

officially

or not, whose purpose

surveillance the activities

is

to keep under

of Russian revolutionaries.

In order to maintain the good will of the French authorities, the For-

Agency made a habit of exaggerating the revolutionary menace. The Surete put the number of Russian revolutionaries in the Paris area eign

alone in 1914 at over forty thousand

—almost ten times the

real total

whole of Western Europe. 18

for the

The

willingness of other

European police forces to cooperate

with the Foreign Agency was increased by a spate of anarchist assassinations.

Among the assassins'

leading victims were President Carnot of

Antonio Canovas del

Castillo, the Spanish prime minisEmpress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary in 1898; King Umberto of Italy in 1900; President McKinley of the United States in 1901; and a succession of prominent Russians: N. P. Bogolepov, the minister of education in 1901; D. S. Sipyagin, minister of the interior

France ter, in

in 1894;

1897; the

(and thus responsible for the Okhrana), in 1902; Sipyagin's successor, V. K. Plehve, in 1904; general of

Moscow

Grand Duke

in 1906;

minister of the interior, in 191 security agencies in

Rome

and 1.

P.

Sergei Aleksandrovich, governor-

A. Stolypin, prime minister and

In 1898 an international conference of

approved a resolution that "The Central

Authorities responsible in each country for the surveillance of anarchists establish direct contact with

one another and exchange

all rele-

vant information." 19

From

Paris the Foreign

Agency ran small groups of agents who

kept watch on Russian emigres in Britain, Germany, and

1912

—

Italy.

—from

In Switzerland, an increasingly important center of the

revolutionary diaspora,

it

had three Geneva policemen on its payroll to files and provide a check on

obtain information directly from police

by the Swiss authorities. Surveillance of emigres in Belgium and Scandinavia was carried out by a mixture of the local police and Foreign Agency agents sent from Paris on special assignments. 20 During the few years before the First World War, however, the

intelligence sent

Foreign Agency was assailed by protests from

socialist and radical on French soil. In 1913 the Russian embassy thought it prudent to announce that the agency had been discontinued. Its work was officially taken over by a private detective agency, the Agence Bint et Sambain, headed by Henri Bint, a former French employee of the Agency. In reality, the agency continued to operate, though with greater discretion than in the

deputies for

its activities

25

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

past.

But

abolition

its official, if fictional,

with the Surete, which complained in

ment

will

no longer be able

dangerous foreign refugees

The Foreign Agency tion. It also

to

in

know

damaged

its

close cooperation

1914 that "the French governas precisely as in the past

did not limit

itself to intelligence collec-

pioneered a wide variety of what the

KGB

later called

"active measures," designed to influence foreign governments lic

what

France are doing." 21

and pub-

opinion, and "special actions" involving various forms of violence.

up the People's Will printing shop like the work of disaffected revolutionaries. In 1890 Rachkovsky "unmasked" a bombmaking conspiracy by Russian emigres in Paris. At a sensational trial some of the plotters were sentenced to imprisonment (one named Landezen, who had fled abroad, in absentia) and others exiled. The Okhrana then arrested sixty-three revolutionaries in Russia who were In 1886 Rachkovsky's agents blew

in

Geneva, successfully making the explosion look

alleged to have links with the Paris

had been

inspired,

bomb

makers. In reality the plot

on Rachkovsky's instructions, by Landezen,

who

was an agent provocateur of the Foreign Agency and provided the money for the bomb factory from agency funds. 22 During his eighteen years in Paris (1884-1902) Rachkovsky managed to cover the tracks of his involvement in this and other cases of alleged emigre bomb factories and bombings. Raytayev, his successor as head of the Foreign Agency (1903-1905), was less fortunate. He was recalled to Russia after the Surete had discovered his involvement in an unsuccessful bomb attack in Paris against Prince Trubetskoi and the bombing of a French protest meeting against Tsarist repression of the 1905 revolution, during which two gardes republicans were wounded.

named Vladimir Burtsev at last 1 890 bomb-making conspiracy. He

In 1909, a revolutionary journalist revealed Rachkovsky's role in the

who had escaped in was none other than the current Foreign Agency chief in Paris, Harting. The Surete concluded that Harting's "precipitate flight and

also alleged that the agent provocateur Landezen,

1890,

disappearance" tended to prove the truth of Burtsev's revelations. Curi-

seemed little concerned about such episodes. The " by the agency was, in its view, "des plus precieux, and clearly outweighed the crimes of its agents provocateurs. 23 Rachkovsky specialized in forgery as well as the use of agents provocateurs. There is a strong probability that he was responsible for

ously, the Surete

intelligence provided

the fabrication of the famous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the

Elders of Zion, which purported to describe a Jewish plot for world

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

26

domination. The Protocols had limited influence before the First World

War. For a time Nicholas

II

believed they provided the key to an

understanding of the 1905 revolution but was then persuaded that they

were a forgery and complained that they "polluted the pure cause of anti-Semitism." Between the wars, however, the Protocols reemerged as one of the central

texts in

Nazi and

fascist anti-Semitism,

becoming

perhaps the most influential forgery of the twentieth century. 24

Rachkovsky's role was not limited to intelligence collection and "active measures."

He

Rachkovsky arrived

also sought to influence Russian foreign policy.

in Paris in

1884 as a committed advocate of an

alliance with France, diplomatically isolated since her defeat in the

Franco-Prussian

War

of 1870-71.

He was

regularly used as secret

intermediary in negotiations both for the Franco-Russian Dual Alli-

ance

in

1891-94 and for

its

closest contacts in Paris

modification in 1899.

Among Rachkovsky's

was Theophile Delcasse, who became from

1898 to 1905 the longest-serving foreign minister in the seventy-year history of the French Third Republic. In arranging his

own

visit to St.

Petersburg to modify the terms of the Dual Alliance in 1899, the Tsar's state visit to

France

in 1901,

and President Loubet's return

visit to

Russia in 1902, Delcasse bypassed the French ambassador, the Marquis

de Montebello, and worked instead through Rachkovsky. The Russian

Count Muraviev, informed the unfortunate Monfullest confidence in Monsieur Rachkovsky and he appears to have gained that of the French government." Rachkovsky eventually overreached himself and was recalled from Paris in 1902. What led to his downfall, however, was not his increasing intrusion into

foreign minister, tebello,

"We

have the

Franco-Russian diplomacy but the outrage of the Tsarina tious revelation that a

at his incau-

French "doctor" employed by her was an un-

qualified charlatan. 25

The most important contribution by of Tsarist foreign policy was sigint

—the

its

the

Okhrana to the making

pioneering role in the development of

signals intelligence derived

from intercepting and where

possible decrypting other governments' communications. Like

most major powers of the ancien regime, eighteenth-century Russia had possessed cabinets

noirs,

or "black chambers," which secretly inter-

cepted both private and diplomatic correspondence. In Western Europe the development of the cabinets noirs was disrupted in varying degrees during the nineteenth century by public and parliamentary protests at interference with the mail service. In Britain, for example, the Decy-

phering Branch was abolished in 1844 after a

Commons row

over the

27

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

opening of the correspondence of the exiled Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini. British sigint did not resume until the First World War. 26 In

was undisturbed The Okhrana had black chambers working for it in the post offices of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov, Riga, Vilna, Tomsk, and Tiflis. The last head of the Okhrana, A. T. Vasilyev, virtuously insisted that their work was directed only against subversives and criminals: "The right-minded citiautocratic Russia, however, the development of sigint

by parliamentary

protests.

zen certainly never had any reason to fear the censorship, for private business was, on principle, completely ignored."

27

In reality, as under

the ancien regime, letter opening was a source of gossip as well as of

The coded correspondence of the Archbishop of Irkutsk when decrypted, that he was having an affair with an

intelligence.

disclosed,

abbess.

28

The Okhrana's

chief cryptanalyst, Ivan Zybin,

breaker of genius. According to the Okhrana chief Zavarzin,

"He was

in

was a code

Moscow,

ciphers he cleared up at a glance, but complicated ciphers placed in a state

P.

a fanatic, not to say a maniac, for his work. Simple

him

almost of trance from which he did not emerge until the

problem was resolved." The original priority of the Okhrana's cryptanalysts

was the coded correspondence of revolutionaries inside and outOkhrana extended its operations to include the

side Russia, but the

diplomatic telegrams sent and received by

St.

Petersburg embassies.

Intercepted diplomatic dispatches had been an irregular source of foreign intelligence ever since the 1740s. In 1800 the foreign minister N. P.

Panin wrote to his ambassador

in Berlin:

We possess the ciphers of the correspondence of the King [of Prussia] with his charge d'affaires here: should

Haugwitz

[the Prussian foreign minister] of

you suspect

bad

faith,

it is

only necessary to find some pretext to get him to write here

on the subject despatch

is

in question.

deciphered,

I

As soon

as his or his King's

will not fail to apprise

you of

its

content. 29

During the early nineteenth century, the increasing use of couriers

number The growing use of the

rather than the mails for diplomatic traffic steadily reduced the

of dispatches intercepted by cabinets

noirs.

electric telegraph in the latter part of the century,

simplified both the transmission

however, greatly

and interception of diplomatic commu-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

28

nications. In France, diplomatic traffic at the

decrypted in cabinets noirs at

end of the century was

both the foreign ministry and the Surete. 30

was shared between the Under Aleksandr Savinsky, head of the foreign ministry's cabinet noir from 1901 to 1910, 31 The Okhrana, its status was enhanced and its organization improved. however, probably remained the dominant partner in the cryptanalytic Similarly, in Russia diplomatic cryptanalysis

Okhrana and

a cabinet noir in the foreign ministry.

cooperation with the foreign ministry.

The breaking of high-grade code and cipher systems depends not simply on the

skill

usually

of code breakers but also on assistance

from espionage. The Okhrana became the

first

modern

intelligence

make one of its major priorities the theft of embassy codes and ciphers as well as plain-text versions of diplomatic telegrams, which could be compared with the coded originals. In so doing it set an important precedent for the KGB. As British ambassador in St. service to

Petersburg from 1904 to 1906, Sir Charles Hardinge discovered that the

head Chancery servant had been offered the then enormous sum of £1,000 to

steal a

copy of one of the diplomatic ciphers. 32 In June 1904

what he termed "a disagreeable shock." A prominent Russian politician had said he "did not mind how much I reported in writing what he told me in conversation, but he begged me on no account to telegraph as all our telegrams are known!" 33 Hardinge discovered three months later that Rachkovsky had set up a secret department in the ministry of the interior (which was responsible Hardinge reported

to the Foreign Office

for the Okhrana), "with a view to obtaining access to the archives of

the foreign missions in Efforts to

St.

Petersburg." 34

improve the British embassy's rather primitive secu-

were unavailing. Cecil Spring Rice, the embassy secretary, reported February 1906: "For some time past papers have been abstracted

rity

in

Embassy The porter and other persons in connection with the Embassy are in the pay of the Police department and are also paid on delivery of papers." Spring Rice claimed to have "established" that from

this

the operation against the British embassy

Okhrana in

official

who had

was run by Komissarov, the award for his successes

recently received an

promoting anti-Semitic propaganda.

On

Komissarov's instructions,

"Emissaries of the police are constantly waiting in the evening outside the

Embassy

in order to take charge of the papers procured." Despite

new embassy safe, the fitting of padlocks to the filing and instructions to diplomatic staff not to let the Chancery

the installation of a cabinets,

keys out of their possession, the theft of papers continued.

Two months

29

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

later

Spring Rice obtained proof "that access has been obtained to the

archives of the Embassy, which have been taken off to the house of the

Agent Komissarov, where they have been photographed." The probawas a bribed embassy servant who had taken wax impressions of the padlocks to the filing cabinets, and had then been provided with duplicate keys by the Okhrana. The American, Swedish, and ble culprit

Belgian embassies

By

all

reported similar experiences. 35

the turn of the century,

if

not before, the diplomatic

intelli-

gence derived from sigint and stolen embassy documents was having an

important (though

still

almost unresearched) influence on Tsarist for-

From 1898 to persuade Germany to sign a

eign policy. 36

in the

1901 Russia secret

made

repeated attempts to

agreement on spheres of influence

Turkish Empire that would recognize her age-old ambitions

in

The attempts were abandoned at the end of 1901 because, as the Russian foreign minister Count Lamsdorf informed his ambassador in Berlin, decrypted German telegrams showed that the German the Bosporus.

government had no

real intention of signing

an agreement. 37

Throughout the reign of Nicholas II, Russia remained the in diplomatic sigint. Britain, Germany, the United States, and most minor powers had no sigint agencies at all until the First World War. Austrian sigint seems to have been limited to military world leader

communications. 38 Tsarist Russia's only serious competitor matic sigint was her

ally,

in diplo-

France. During the twenty years before the

World War the cabinets noirs at the Quai d'Orsay and the Surete had some success in breaking the diplomatic codes and ciphers of most major powers. But whereas Russia broke some French diplomatic codes and ciphers, France was unable to decrypt any Russian diplomatic First

traffic at all

(though she did have some success with Foreign Agency

codes and ciphers). In the

summer

of 1905, during the closing stages

neously, the Russo-Japanese

War and

the

of,

Franco-German

simulta-

crisis

over

Morocco, there was a brief period of sigint cooperation between Russia and her French ally. In June 1905 the Russian ambassador, on the orders of his government, handed the French prime minister, Maurice Rouvier, a copy of a decrypted German telegram dealing with the

Moroccan

crisis.

Rouvier considered the telegram so important that he

ordered the Surete to pass on to the Foreign Agency diplomatic

traffic its

sent to St. Petersburg by the acting lov, transmitting the

all

cabinet noir was able to decrypt.

the Japanese

The telegrams

head of the Foreign Agency, Manui-

Japanese decrypts, were themselves decrypted by

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

30

the cabinet noir at the Quai d'Orsay.

Unaware

that the decrypts

had

been given to the Russians on the orders of the prime minister, the Quai d'Orsay concluded instead that there had been a serious breach of sigint

and ordered

security

those at the Surete.

its

As

own

cryptanalysts to break off

all

contact with

a result of the farcical misunderstanding gener-

ated in Paris by the brief period of Franco-Russian sigint cooperation, the cabinets noirs at the Quai d'Orsay and the Surete continued inde-

pendently for the next six years to decrypt substantial amounts of diplomatic

traffic

—sometimes

the

same diplomatic

traffic

—without

ever communicating the results to each other. There seems to have been

no further exchange of

The

sigint

between Russia and France. 39

intermittent confusion in France's handling of sigint

had

one major adverse consequence for Russian cryptanalysts. Russia con-

World War to decrypt significant, but amounts of the diplomatic traffic of all but one of the major powers. The exception, from 1912, was Germany. 40 The changes in German diplomatic code and cipher systems that seem to have defeated Russian cryptanalysts during the two years before the outbreak of war in 1914 stemmed directly from French indiscretions during the Franco-German Agadir crisis of 191 1. In the course of that crisis the French foreign minister, Justin de Selves, discovered from tinued until the eve of the First

still

unquantifiable,

German ter,

telegrams decrypted by his cabinet noir that the prime minis-

Joseph Caillaux, had negotiated with the Germans behind his back.

The decrypts were used by de

Selves

and some of

his officials to start

a whispering campaign accusing Caillaux of treachery. Angered by the

campaign against him, Caillaux took the extraordinary step of calling on the German charge d'affaires and asking to see the original text of telegrams that referred to him in order to compare them with the decrypted versions. "I was wrong," he later admitted to the president of the Republic, "but I had to defend myself." The Germans, not surprisingly, introduced new diplomatic ciphers, which defeated the French as well as their Russian allies. 41 In Russia, as in France, foreign intelligence collection and analysis suffered

from interdepartmental

the responsibility of the

first

rivalry. Military intelligence

section of the General Staff

was

Though

German army before 1914 was mediocre, that about Russia's other main opponent, Austria, was excellent. 42 Military intelligence's main source, Colonel Alfred Redl, a senior Austrian intelintelligence about the

was probably the most important agent anywhere in Europe during the generation before the First World War. During the ligence officer,

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

31

winter of 1901-1902, Colonel Batyushin, head of Russian military

Warsaw, discovered that, unknown either to his superiors or to his friends, Redl was a promiscuous homosexual. By a mixture of blackmail and bribery of the kind sometimes later employed by the KGB, he recruited Redl as a penetration agent. With the money given intelligence in

him by the Russians, Redl was

able to purchase cars not merely for

himself but for one of his favorite lovers as well, a young Uhlan to

whom

he also paid 600 crowns a month.

officer,

the voluminous

decade before his exposure and

intelligence he provided during the

suicide in

Among

1913 were the Austrian mobilization plans against both

Russia and Serbia. 43 Tsarist diplomats

and consuls also dabbled in intelligence, occaBut military and diplo-

sionally collecting material of military value.

matic intelligence were poorly coordinated, reflecting the general lack of communication between the ministries of

Despite the army's interest in humint grasp the importance of

sigint.

The

(human

first

great

war and foreign intelligence),

German

Eastern Front, at Tannenberg in August 1914,

Russian forces' remarkable foolishness ciphered, in clear text. to

enemy

officer,

German

in

failed to

victory on the

owed much

to the

sending radio messages unen-

radio operators initially began listening

signals simply out of curiosity, but the

Colonel

it

affairs.

Max Hoffmann, who became

German

operations

the architect of victory,

quickly grasped their importance. Tannenberg became the

first

military

made possible by sigint. Thanks to sigint, wrote Hoffmann later, "We knew all the Russian plans." Almost as in a war game, the Russians found themselves surrounded by an enemy who had followed their victory

every movement. 44

Okhrana had no monopoly on foreign intelligence had no monopoly either on "active measures." Russia's

Just as the collection, so

it

most numerous agents of influence were foreign journalists who were bribed by the ministry of finance to support the massive foreign loans required by the Tsarist regime and the Russian economy, and to calm the anxieties of foreign investors about the safety of their investments.

In much of pre- 19 14 Europe it was regarded as perfectly normal for governments to "subsidize" friendly foreign newspapers. A French

parliamentary report in 1913, though critical of some aspects of intelli-

gence work, described the need for such subsidies as "incontestable." 45

Russian "subsidies" were the largest in Europe. Since France was by far the biggest foreign investor in prewar Russia, the chief target of the ministry of finance

was the French

press.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

32

Artur Raffalovich, the ministry's representative

in Paris, bribed every

French newspaper of note with the single exception of the

Socialist

(later Communist) UHumanite. By March 1905 the confidence of French investors had been so shaken by both the abortive Russian revolution and Russian reverses in the war against Japan that with the support of Delcasse, the French foreign minister, Raffalovich was dis-

tributing bribes to the tune of 200,000 francs a month.

case of agents of influence,

it is

difficult to assess

press support purchased in this way. In

for a further loan.

By

March 1905 even

French banks from breaking

largess failed to prevent

As

usual in the

the importance of the Raffalovich's

off negotiations

1914, however, 25 percent of France's foreign

investment was in Russia (four-fifths of

compared with only 9 percent

in the vast

it

in

government loans)

—as

French Empire. Without press

support, the kind of crisis of confidence that prevented the conclusion

March 1905 would surely have been more frequent. 46 Though Tsarist Russia's foreign intelligence system was diffuse

of a loan in

and poorly coordinated, for the Soviet period. It

it

established a series of important precedents

engaged

in a

wide variety of "active measures"

as well as in intelligence collection. It led the

use of espionage to assist the prototype of the

"moles")

who

its

code breakers.

world

And

in sigint

in Alfred

and

Redl

in the it

had

more numerous foreign penetration agents (or were to become the chief asset of Soviet

in the 1930s

foreign intelligence. There was, however, another Tsarist precedent that did even

more than Redl

to persuade Soviet intelligence services

of the potential of penetration agents as a weapon against their opponents.

The Bolsheviks discovered from Okhrana files

Revolution that almost from the cratic

Labor Party

split into

moment

after the

February

the Russian Social

Demo-

Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1903 they

had been more successfully penetrated than perhaps any other revolutionary group. 47 Okhrana knowledge of Bolshevik organization and activities was so detailed and thorough that, despite the destruction of some of its records in the aftermath of the February Revolution, what survived has since become one of the major documentary sources for early Bolshevik history.

Some Okhrana files must ment

to Stalin,

who, once

in

later

have been a source of embarrass-

power, posed as the most loyal of Lenin's

followers. In reality, as late as 1909, he criticized Lenin for a

number

of theoretical "blunders" and for an "incorrect organizational policy."

A

letter intercepted

reveals the

by the Foreign Agency

moment when

in Paris in

Stalin finally decided to

December 1910

throw

in his lot

with

33

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

Lenin. Lenin's

line,

he wrote, was "the only correct one," and he

described Lenin himself as a "shrewd fellow" (umnyi muzhik).™ It is unlikely that Stalin was ever, as has been suggested, an Okhrana agent, though the Okhrana may well have tried to recruit him. The Okhrana had, however, no shortage of other agents in the Bolshevik Party. Of the five members of the Bolshevik Party's St. Petersburg Committee in 1908-1909, no fewer than four were Okhrana

agents.

49

degrees.

Other anti-Tsarist groups were also penetrated to varying

Among

those in the Social Revolutionary Party in the pay of

Okhrana was the head of its "Fighting Section" from 1904 to 1909, Yevno Azev, who was responsible for organizing assassinations and terrorist attacks. Among his victims was the minister of the interior Vyacheslav von Plehve, blown to pieces by a Fighting Section bomb. Azev, however, was a confused figure who scarcely knew in the end "whether he was a terrorist spying upon the government or a police agent spying upon the terror." 50 The most successful mole recruited by the Okhrana in 1910, from the Tsarist viewpoint, was a Moscow worker named Roman Malinovsky, who in 1912 was elected as one of the six Bolshevik deputies in the Duma, the Tsarist parliament. "For the first time," wrote Lenin enthusiastically, "we have an outstanding leader [Malinovsky] from among the workers representing us

in the

Duma."

In a party

dedicated to proletarian revolution but as yet without proletarian lead-

whom

ers,

Lenin saw Malinovsky,

tral

Committee, as a portent of great importance:

to build a workers' party with

he brought onto the Bolshevik Cen"It

really possible

is

such people, though the

difficulties will

be incredibly great!" The Bolshevik and Menshevik deputies elected in

1912 sat for a year as members of a single Social Democratic group in the

Duma. But when

man

the group split in 1913 Malinovsky

became

chair-

of the Bolshevik fraction. 51

By 1912 Lenin was

Okhrana Committee set one of whose members

so concerned by the problem of

penetration that, on his initiative, the Bolshevik Central

—

up a three-man "provocation commission" was Malinovsky. After the arrest of Stalin and his fellow member of the Central Committee, Yakov Sverdlov, in February 1913, as the result of information supplied by Malinovsky, Lenin discussed with Malinovsky

what could be done

to forestall further arrests. In July 1913

Lenin again

Okhrana penetration with Malinovsky and two of his chief lieutenants, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev. Only Malinovsky saw the irony of their conclusion that there must be an discussed the problem of

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

34

Okhrana agent near to the six Bolshevik deputies whose chairman he was. He was instructed to be "as conspiratorial as possible" in order to

minimize the dangers of police penetration.

tor of the Police Department, described

S. P.

Beletsky, the direc-

Malinovsky as "the pride of the

Okhrana." But the

Even Lenin, drinking. In

strain of his double life eventually

May

proved too much.

became concerned about

his strongest supporter,

heavy

his

1914 the new deputy minister of the interior, V. F.

Dzhunkovsky, possibly fearing the scandal that would

result if Mali-

novsky's increasingly erratic behavior led to the revelation that the

Okhrana employed him

as an agent in the

him. Malinovsky resigned from the

Duma, decided

Duma and fled from

to get rid of

St.

Petersburg

with a 6,000-ruble payoff, which the Okhrana urged him to use to start a

new

abroad.

life

Rumors

agent. Yuli Martov, the

rapidly spread that he

Menshevik

certain without the slightest doubt that he

whether we

will

be able to prove

it is

had been an Okhrana in June "We are all

wrote

leader,

is

a provocateur

.

.

but

.

another matter." Though accept-

ing that Malinovsky had committed "political suicide," Lenin dis-

missed the charges against him.

When Malinovsky

reemerged

in a

German

prisoner-of-war

camp, spreading Bolshevik propaganda among his fellow POWs, Lenin resumed correspondence with him and continued to defend him against

worked

the charge of having

for the

Okhrana. That charge, Lenin

repeated in January 1917, was "absolute nonsense."

When

proof began

emerge from Okhrana files opened after the February Revolution, Lenin at first refused to believe it. Malinovsky's career came to a

to

tragically bizarre

end eighteen months

later.

turned to Russia, insisting that "he could not

In October 1918 he relive outside the revolu-

tion" and apparently hoping to rehabilitate himself.

He was

tried

by a

revolutionary tribunal and shot in the gardens of the Kremlin on

No-

vember

6,

1918.

Malinovsky's

ability to deceive

do with Lenin's sense of revolutionaries, at his

preme

guilt,

own

Lenin for so long had

like that

much

to

of some other upper-class

privileged upbringing. Malinovsky's su-

merit, in Lenin's eyes,

was

his lower-class origin.

He was

the

prototype of the working-class organizers and orators who were in disappointingly short supply in Bolshevik ranks. Malinovsky's criminal record and sometimes violent habits only emphasized, in Lenin's view, his authentic working-class credentials. Lenin's initial attraction to Stalin, of

which he was

also later to repent,

had a similar

origin. Stalin's

35

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

humble

origins

and rough manner,

free

from

trace of bourgeois

all

refinement, once again triggered Lenin's feelings of guilt at his

own

class origins.

The penetration of the Bolshevik Party had,

paradoxically, ad-

vantages as well as disadvantages for Lenin. Beletsky, the prewar police

prewar policy

director, later admitted that "the

whole purpose" of

had been to prevent, at

the unification of Russian socialism.

"I worked," he said,

most

likely to

all costs,

his

man many

"on the principle of divide and rule." The

keep Russian Socialists divided was Lenin. Though

Bolsheviks hoped for reunion with the Mensheviks, Lenin stood out resolutely against

it.

Beletsky actually smoothed Lenin's path on a

number of occasions by conveniently

arresting both his

more

difficult

Menshevik opponents and those Bolsheviks most anxious for the reunification of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. But whereas the Okhrana was convinced that a disunited party would necessarily mean a weaker socialist movement, Lenin believed that, on the contrary, the existence of a separate Bolshevik Party was the key to victory. Only a disciplined, doctrinally pure, "monolithic" elite of hardened revolutionaries could lead the Russian people to the promised land. Though the promised land was never reached, the chaotic conditions that followed the overthrow of Tsarism in February 1917 proved Lenin's strategy of revolution right. In the aftermath of the February Revolution the Bolsheviks were fewer in

number than

main rivals, the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries. But it was the Bolsheviks who took power in October. The remarkable tactical victory of the Okhrana in penetrating the Bolsheviks thus ended in 1917 in strategic defeat and its own extinction. The February Revolution (March 8-12, 1917, by today's calendar) took most revolutionaries by surprise. Only six weeks earlier the forty-six-year-old Lenin, in exile in Switzerland, had predicted: "We the old will probably not live to see the decisive battles of the coming revolution." The Okhrana probably had a more accurate sense of the mood in Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was renamed on the outbreak of either of their

war) than any of the revolutionary groups.

One

of

its

agents predicted

on the eve of revolution: "The underground revolutionary parties are preparing a revolution, but a revolution,

if it

takes place, will be spon-

taneous, quite likely a hunger riot." Those closest to revolution, he reported, were the mothers of large families, "exhausted endlessly at the their sick

tail

of queues, and having suffered so

from standing in watching

much

and half-starved children": "they are stockpiles of inflamma-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

36

ble material, needing only a spark to set

them

Revolution was sparked by demonstrations

bread on March

The

8.

By

afire."

52

Sure enough, the

among women queuing

for

the 10th the whole of Petrograd was on strike.

decisive factor at this point

was the

attitude of the Petro-

grad garrison. In 1905 the Revolution had been broken by the army.

March 1917

army joined the Revolution. Once again, the Okhrana had detected the way the wind was blowing. A political rally by striking workers had been broken up by Cossacks on February 27, but, In

the

reported the Okhrana, "in general there was an impression that the

Cossacks were on the side of the workers." 53

On March

12 a section of

the Petrograd garrison mutinied and the success of the Revolution was assured. Three days later Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in favor of his

Grand Duke Mikhail. When Mikhail renounced the throne March 16, over four centuries of rule by the Romanov dynasty came to an end. Power passed to a Provisional Government mainly composed of liberal politicians, coexisting uneasily with a Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which became the model, and in some sense the spokesman, for local Soviets all over brother the

the next day,

Russia.

With Tsarism tory" went

its

into

what Trotsky termed "the dustbin of

political police.

On March

Okhrana headquarters. According

12 the

crowd broke

his-

into

to the outraged director of police,

A.

T. Vasilyev:

All the archives of the Special Investigation Branch, with

records of finger-prints, photographs, and other data con-

cerning thieves, forgers, and murderers, were dragged into the courtyard

and there solemnly burned. Further, the

intruders also broke open

my

desk and appropriated 25,000

rubles of public money, which

Though illegal

down

I

had had

in

my

keeping.

Vasilyev virtuously protested that he "could not recall a single

action" for which he was responsible, he soon found himself in

the Peter and Paul fortress, complaining of having to sleep on "straw

mattresses and pillows stuffed with hens' feathers," eat "dreadful, evil-

smelling soup and an equally repulsive hash

made

of

all

sorts of un-

speakable offal," and of being allowed to have a bath only once a

bathroom with "drafts in every direction." 54 The imprisonment of the head of the Okhrana, like the reduction of the Tsar fortnight in a freezing

Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)

Nicholas

II,

Emperor of All Russia,

to the

37

rank of Citizen Romanov,

seemed to symbolize the birth of a new democratic order and the

final

victory over despotism. In the aftermath of revolution both the Provi-

Government and the Petrograd Soviet believed that Russia would never again have a political police.

sional

2 The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" (1917-21)

The Cheka,

the ancestor of today's

KGB, was

founded on December

When the KGB was established in 1954 it adopted the Cheka emblems of the shield and the sword: the shield to defend the Revolution, the sword to smite its foes. By the time Gordievsky escaped in 1985, his KGB identity card carried only the emblem of a shield; the sword had been dropped in an attempt to soften the KGB's ruthless 20, 1917.

KGB officers, however, still style themselves Cheand receive their salaries on the twentieth of each month ("Che2 kists' Day") in honor of the Cheka's birthday. Like British income tax on its introduction in 1799, the Cheka was originally intended only as a temporary expedient. Lenin little dreamed that it would rapidly become both the largest political police force and the largest foreign intelligence service in the world. Before the reputation. Today's 1

kisty

Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 (November 7 by the Western calendar adopted afterward) Lenin had foreseen no need for either political police or foreign intelligence.

When

he returned to Petrograd

renamed Leningrad) two months after the February Revolution had overthrown Tsarism, he hailed the coming of world revolution. The (since

Bolsheviks confidently expected their national revolutionary

movement

own

that

38

revolution to spark an inter-

would overthrow world

capital-

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" ism. In the

new postrevolutionary world order

there

39

would be no place

Leon Trotsky declared Commissar for Foreign

for conventional diplomats, let alone for spies.

confidently on his appointment as People's

Affairs after the October Revolution: "I will issue a few revolutionary

proclamations to the peoples of the world and then shut up shop." ordered the publication of Tsarist Russia's secret treaties with then announced: "The abolition of secret diplomacy

is

He

its allies,

the primary

3 condition of an honorable, popular, really democratic foreign policy."

Lenin's prerevolutionary vision of

life

in Bolshevik

and Revolution, written there would be no place even

Russia was

summer

of

similarly Utopian. In State

in the

1917, he claimed that

for a police force,

He acknowledged that in

the transition from would be necessary to arrange for "the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of wage slaves of yesterday." But such suppression would be "comparatively easy": still

less for a secret police.

capitalism to

communism

it

Naturally, the exploiters are unable to suppress the people

without a highly complex machine for performing this task, but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very

simple "machine," almost without a "machine," without a special apparatus, by the simple organization

of the armed

people.

The

people, Lenin believed,

would mete out

class justice

on the

street

4

The October Revolution, however, ushered in a world very different from the Utopian vision of State and Revolution.

as the need arose.

Crucial to the legitimacy of the Soviet state that emerged from the

Revolution

is

the

Communist myth

tariat," the Bolsheviks led a

that, as "the

vanguard of the prole-

popular rising that expressed the will not

merely of themselves but of the Russian people as a whole. The reality of the October Revolution, which neither Lenin nor his successors

could ever admit even to themselves, was a coup d'etat by a revolutionary minority against the moribund provisional government that had

succeeded the Tsarist regime. By

first

opposing and then overthrowing

an increasingly unpopular government, the Bolsheviks

won

mass, but

not majority, support. In the postrevolutionary elections to the Constituent

Assembly, their main

tionaries (SRs), gained less

rivals

on the

left,

the Socialist Revolu-

an absolute majority while the Bolsheviks

won

than a quarter of the vote. Even with the support of the Left

Socialist Revolutionaries (LSRs), they

remained

in a minority.

When

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

40

met in January 1918, the Bolsheviks broke it up. The problem of opposition, both at home and abroad, to the new

the Assembly

Bolshevik government, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnar-

kom), proved vastly greater than Lenin had anticipated.

all.

Convinced of

leaders tended

their

He

quickly

was necessary after monopoly of Marxist wisdom, the Bolshevik

concluded that "a special apparatus" to deal with

from the outset

it

to classify all opposition, whatever

social origin, as counterrevolution.

its

On December 4 the Military Revolu-

tionary Committee, which had carried out the October Revolution,

Commission

Combating Counterrevolution and SaboThe news on December 19 of an impending strike by all state employees persuaded Sovnarkom, under Lenin's chairmanship, that still more drastic action was needed. Dzerzhinsky was instructed "to establish a special commission to examine the possibility of combating such a strike by the most energetic revolutionary measures." The next day, December 20, Lenin wrote to Dzerzhinsky: "The bourgeoisie is intent on committing the most heinous of crimes." Addressing Sovnarkom the same evening, Dzerzhinsky declared: created the

for

tage under Feliks Dzerzhinsky.

Do

not think that

are not

now

seek forms of revolutionary justice;

need of justice.

in

a fight to the

I

finish. Life

war now

It is

or death!

I

—face to

propose,

I

we

face,

demand an

organ for the revolutionary settlement of accounts with counterrevolutionaries.

Sovnarkom approved the

creation under Dzerzhinsky's leadership of

the All-Russian Extraordinary revolution and Sabotage, better

Commission

known

Combating CounterCheka (one of several

for

as the

abbreviations of Vserossiiskaya Chrezvychainaya Komissiya po Borbe s

Kontrrevolyutsiei

i

Sabotazhem). 5

nowadays the object of a KGB-inspired him greater adulation than the combined total of that bestowed on all his successors (an embarrassingly high proportion of whom are now officially acknowledged as ." writes the Soviet major criminals). "Knight of the Revolution Feliks Dzerzhinsky

is

personality cult, which showers on

.

historian V. Andrianov, "There were

Even

many

.

people deserving this

title.

whenever these words are spoken, the mind turns primarily to Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. His entire heroic life paved so,

.

.

.

the road to immortality." 6

Like a majority of the early Cheka leadership, Dzerzhinsky was

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" of non-Russian origin.

He was born

in

1

41

877 into a well-to-do family of

Polish landowners and intelligentsia, and believed in childhood that he 7

had a vocation as a Catholic priest. Instead he became a schoolboy convert to Marxism, and in 1895 joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party. A year later he abandoned his formal education in order "to be closer to the people" and "to learn from them." By his own later account, he quickly became "a successful agitator and got through to the completely untouched masses

—

wherever workers met together." Dzerzhinsky was words, "the ing

fiercest

member

enemy of nationalism." led

in half

Kingdom

of Poland

and cooperation with Russian Marx-

not for an independent Poland.

to Dzerzhinsky's personality.

became a found-

by Rosa Luxemburg, which campaigned

for proletarian internationalism ists,

own

also, in his

In 1900 he

of the Social Democratic Party of the

and Lithuania (SKDPiL),

and

at social evenings, in taverns

He

Compromise of any kind was

wrote in 1901: "I

measures, or to love in half measures,

I

am

am

alien

not able to hate

not able to give up

I have either to give up my whole soul or give up nothing." At no point during his career as a revolutionary in Tsarist Russia or Poland was Dzerzhinsky at liberty for longer than three years. He was arrested for the first time in 1897 after a young worker "seduced by ten rubles from the gendarmes" informed on him. When his prison career

half my soul.

ended twenty years

later

with his liberation from

Moscow

Central

Prison after the February Revolution, he had spent eleven years in exile,

or penal servitude, and escaped three times. 8

zhinsky joined forces with the Bolsheviks,

was elected

gate,

On

initially as

to the Bolshevik Central

his release

an

Committee

jail,

Dzer-

SDKPiL deleat the

summer

Party conference, and took a prominent part in the October Revolution.

9

During

his first year as head of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky and slept in his office in the Lubyanka. His powers of endurance and Spartan lifestyle earned him the nickname Iron Feliks. 10 The "Old Chekist" Fyodor Timofeevich Fomin later eulogized Dzer-

worked,

ate,

zhinsky's determination to refuse any privilege denied to other Chekists:

An

him his dinner from the room used by all the Cheka workers. Sometimes he would try to bring Feliks Edmundovich something a bit tastier or a little bit better, and Feliks Edmundovich would squint his eyes inquisitively and ask, "You mean that old messenger would bring

common

dining

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

42

everyone has had this for dinner tonight?"

And

the old man,

hiding his

embarrassment, would rush to answer, "Everyone,

everyone,

Comrade Dzerzhinsky."

11

Like Lenin, Dzerzhinsky was an incorruptible workaholic, prepared to sacrifice

both himself and others for the cause of the Revolution.

"My

"comes from were used to

strength," he claimed in his final speech before his death,

never sparing myself." 12 After his death these qualities

construct a portrait of Dzerzhinsky resembling a feeble parody of the

hagiography of a medieval

man

of the

KGB

saint.

from 1982

According to Viktor Chebrikov, chair-

to 1988:

Edmundovich whole-heartedly sought to eliminate and crimes from the world and dreamed of the times when wars and national enmity would vanish forever from Feliks

injustice

our

His whole

life.

he expressed

life

in these

was

mankind with my love, dirt of modern life." St.

Feliks

in

keeping with the motto which

words: "I would like to embrace to

warm

would have been unlikely

comic eulogy,

it

and

to cleanse

it

all

of the

to appreciate Chebrikov's mildly

for his gifts did not include a sense of

humor. Since, by

the 1980s, "lofty humanists" such as Dzerzhinsky were supposed to

have a sense of humor, however, Chebrikov made a humorless attempt to defend

not,

him

loved

life

was some people thought him. He manifestations and in all its richness, knew how to

against the charge of being humorless. Dzerzhinsky

Chebrikov

insisted, "the ascetic that

in all its

joke and laugh, and loved music and nature." 13

The

his death in 1926. In a conference effigy

KGB began immediately after room in the KGB officers' club an

cult of St. Feliks within the

of Dzerzhinsky, incorporating death masks of his face and hands

and wearing

his uniform,

was placed

veneration similar to Lenin's

in a glass coffin as

embalmed remains

in the

an object of

Red Square

mausoleum. 14 Dzerzhinsky's reputation survived unscathed into the Stalinist era, though it became increasingly overshadowed by Stalin's for almost everything else. On the Cheka's twentieth anniversary in December 1937 Dzerzhinsky was

own alleged genius for intelligence as

eulogized as "the indefatigable Bolshevik, the steadfast knight of the

Revolution": "Under his leadership on

many

occasions the

Cheka

staved off deadly dangers which threatened the young Soviet repub-

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"

43

15

But as the Stalin period progressed, portraits of Dzerzhinsky became smaller and fewer. Shortly after the Second World War, the lie."

Dzerzhinsky

was thrown out of the

effigy

KGB

officers'

club and

apparently destroyed. 16

The

revival

and expansion of the Dzerzhinsky

cult during the

1960s was a product of de-Stalinization and the attempt by the to take refuge from the horrendous reality of atrocities of the Stalinist era

imagining, in which

its

by creating a mythical past of

St. Feliks,

KGB

involvement in the its

own

"knight of the Revolution," slew the

dragon of Counterrevolution. The most frequently repeated quotation in

KGB texts

is

Dzerzhinsky's insistence that Chekists require "a

heart, a cool head,

and clean hands." In the

late

KGB

of Dzerzhinsky was unveiled outside

warm

1950s a huge statue

headquarters in Dzer-

zhinsky Square. The main object of veneration within the First Chief (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate today

is

a large bust of Dzerzhinsky

on a marble pedestal constantly surrounded by fresh

FCD

officers in the

at

some

flowers. All

young

stage in their early careers have to lay

flowers or wreaths before their founder's bust then stand silent for a

moment

with head bowed

tomb of

the

unknown

much

soldier.

as

if

they were war veterans at the

By such

rituals today's

KGB

officers

succeed in strengthening their self-image as Chekisty and suppressing,

uneasy awareness of their far more direct links with

at least in part, the

NKVD.

Stalin's

The

17

original

20, 1917, for use

weapons approved by Sovnarkom on December

by Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka against the forces of

counterrevolution were "seizure of property, resettlement, deprivation of [ration] cards, publication of lists of enemies of the people, etc." 18

Cheka's main weapon, however, was to be

terror.

The As Lenin woke up

rapidly to the reality of opposition on a scale he had considered inconceivable before the Revolution, he concluded that "a special system of

organized violence" would be necessary to establish the dictatorship of

war the Bolsheviks could not afford to be outmoded notions of "bourgeois" legality or morality.

the proletariat. In the class

constrained by

The

greatest revolutionary rising of the nineteenth century, the Paris

Commune much

of

1

87 1 had been defeated, Lenin argued, because ,

it

placed

and too little in force. Its failure to suppress the bourgeoisie by force had led directly to its downfall. Lenin

too

faith in conciliation

spoke scathingly of "the prejudices of the intelligentsia against the death penalty." 19 The masses, he believed, had healthier instincts. As early as

December 1917 he encouraged them

to practice lynch law

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

44

("street justice") against "speculators,"

"class enemies."

and generally to

terrorize their

20

Like Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, though not personally a brutal man, class from which he had sprung. had trained himself to be "without pity" in defending the Revolution. One of his chief lieutenants, Martyn Ianovich Latsis, wrote in the Cheka periodical Krasny Terror (Red Terror):

burned with ideological hatred for the

He

told his wife that he

We

are not waging

war against

minating the bourgeoisie as a

individuals.

During

class.

We

are exter-

investigation,

do

not look for evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power.

The

first

questions that you ought to

What is his origin? What is his education or profession? And it is these questions put are:

To what

class does

he belong?

that ought to determine the fate of the accused. In this lies

the significance and essence of the

While Dzerzhinsky and

his lieutenants

Red

Terror. 21

were converted to Red Terror

only by what they saw as the objective needs of class war, some of the

Cheka rank and file, especially in the provinces, showed minded enjoyment of brutality. Yakov Khristoforovich

a less highPeters, the

most important of Dzerzhinsky's early deputies, later acknowledged that "many filthy elements" had tried to attach themselves to the Cheka. 22 He omitted to mention that some of them succeeded. Cheka atrocities, though on a smaller scale than those of Stalin's NKVD, were every bit as horrific. Until the

summer

of 1918 the Cheka's use of terror was mode-

rated by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (LSRs), on

whose support

the Bolsheviks initially relied. In January 1918 despite opposition from

Lenin and Dzerzhinsky, the LSRs in Sovnarkom successfully demanded representation in the Cheka. One of the four LSRs appointed to the Cheka Collegium, Vyacheslav Alexeevich Aleksandrovich, became Dzerzhinsky's deputy. In March 1918 the LSRs left Sovnarkom in protest against the peace of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. The Bolshevik Party changed its name to Communist, and Sovnarkom, henceforth wholly Communist, moved its seat of government and the Russian capital from Petrograd to Moscow. But though the LSRs had left the government, remarkably they remained in the Cheka. Indeed, ac-

cording to the

LSR

version of events, Dzerzhinsky pleaded with

to stay, telling their leader

Maria Spiridonova

that,

them

without their sup-

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" port,

he would "no longer be able to tame the bloodthirsty impulses in

[Cheka] ranks." So long as the

no executions

LSR

his

45

LSRs remained

for political crimes.

in the

Cheka, there were

Dzerzhinsky had such confidence in

deputy, Aleksandrovich, that after the

move

to

Moscow he

surrendered to him the main responsibility for day-to-day administration so that he could concentrate

on operational work. 23

The Cheka established its Moscow headquarters at Bolshaia Lubyanka 11, previously occupied by the Yakor (Anchor) Insurance Company and Lloyd's of London. (Later it moved to number 2, formerly the home of the Rossia Insurance Company, now the headquar24 ters of the KGB and renamed Ulitsa Dzerzhinskogo 2. ) What Dzerzhinsky called the "bloodthirsty impulses" among the Cheka rank and file inevitably made their arrival in Moscow unwelcome. Among the Chekists'

first

Moscow

victims was the celebrated circus clown Bim-

Bom, whose repertoire included jokes about the Communists. Like the

KGB,

the

Cheka was not noted

subversion.

When

for

its

sense of humor about ideological

stern-faced Chekists advanced on

one of his performances, the circus audience assumed all

mood changed

part of the fun. Their

to panic as

Bim-Bom during at first that

Bim-Bom

it

fled

was

from

the ring with the Chekists firing after him. 25

weapon used by the Cheka against counterrevolution was agent penetration. Though Dzerzhinsky denounced the Tsarist tradition of agents provocateurs, he quickly became expert at using them. 26 By the beginning of 1918, according to a Besides terror, the main

Soviet official history, Chekists were already "regularly undertaking

such dangerous operations" as agent penetration: "The situation of the tense class struggle

counterrevolution.

demanded quick

Any

courage and valor were his natural version of events, the

action in exposing the nests of

careless step could cost the Chekist his

first

traits."

life.

According to the

But

KGB

major success of Cheka penetration was

achieved against the organization called Union of Struggle against the Bolsheviks and the Dispatch of Troops to [General] Kaledin, based in Petrograd. cer,

A

Chekist

named Golubev, posing

as a former Tsarist

"succeeded in quickly penetrating the Union, exposing

bers of the

White

officers'

of their secret meetings."

offi-

many mem-

underground, and in finding out the location

As a result, during January and February,

the

whole Union, about four thousand strong, "was exposed by the Chekists and rendered completely harmless, with aid from the Red Guards." 27 Much expanded during the 1930s, the Cheka's two most effective techniques in destroying opposition to the Bolsheviks, terror

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

46

and agent penetration, formed the achievements of Stalin's

basis of the

two most

striking

NKVD: the greatest peacetime Terror in Euro-

pean history and the largest-scale penetration of foreign government bureaucracies ever achieved by any intelligence service.

The

first

major

expansion of both terror and agent penetration, however, occurred during the Civil

War

of 1918-20.

The young Soviet regime faced a bewildering variety of threats to its survival. The October Revolution and its aftermath had left it in initial control only of Petrograd, Moscow, and a fluctuating area within roughly a three-hundred-mile radius of Moscow (rather more to the east, less to the south). Most of the rest of Russia was in administrative chaos. The dispersal of the democratically elected Constituent Assembly effectively destroyed the Bolsheviks' claims, in the eyes of most of

the world (but not, of course, their own), to be the legitimate govern-

ment of Russia. Their problems were compounded by the draconian peace settlement that the Germans demanded and which Lenin insisted Soviet Russia

had no option but to accept. "If you are not inclined

crawl on your belly through the mud," Lenin told the in the Bolshevik leadership

many

to

doubters

(who included Dzerzhinsky), "then you are

not a revolutionary but a chatterbox."

By the peace of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918 (nullified eight months later by the Allied victory on the Western Front), the Bolsheviks were forced to consent to the dismemberment of western Russia. In May the revolt in Siberia of the Czechoslovak Legion recruited by the former Tsarist

By

army marked

the beginning of two and a half years of civil war.

July there were eighteen anti-Bolshevik governments in what re-

mained of the old Tsarist Empire. Recognized only by its German conqueror (until it in turn was conquered in November), the Soviet regime was an international pariah. By the summer of 1918 the remaining Allied diplomats stranded in Soviet Russia were conspiring with the

Bolsheviks' opponents, and the British, French, American, and Japanese

governments had begun military intervention. 28

The Bolsheviks saw of a great Allied

the Civil

War from

plot. In reality the revolt

the beginning as part

of the Czechoslovak Legion

had been prompted not by the Allies but by fears for its own survival by Leon Trotsky, now commissar for war, to disarm it. 29 To Lenin and Sovnarkom, however, it seemed evident that the Czechs were the tools of "the Anglo-French stockbrokers." "What we are after attempts

involved in," said Lenin in July, "is a systematic, methodical and

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" evidently long-planned military

and

financial

47

counterrevolutionary

campaign against the Soviet Republic, which all the representatives of Anglo-French imperialism have been preparing for months." 30 The KGB still tends to interpret all plots and attacks against the young Soviet regime as "manifestations of a unified conspiracy" by its class

home and the "imperialist powers" abroad. The reality was different. Had there been a "unified conspiracy," the Bolshevik

enemies very

31

at

regime could never have survived.

During 1919 the Bolsheviks faced three great military the spring attack by the forces of the former Tsarist naval

threats:

commander

Admiral Kolchak from Siberia, and the summer offensives by the White generals Denikin and Yudenich from, respectively, the Caucasus and the Gulf of Finland. Yudenich reached the outskirts of Petrograd and almost succeeded

in cutting the railway linking

the Bolsheviks survived these attacks brilliant leadership of the

was due,

Red Army. Their

with Moscow. That

in part, to Trotsky's

survival

however, to the divisions of their opponents. sives of

it

Had

owed even more,

the separate offen-

Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenich been part of a coordinated

onslaught on Petrograd and Moscow, the counterrevolution would

probably have triumphed. Instead, each of the White armies acted independently of the others. Each of the main anti-Bolshevik com-

manders was anxious to reserve for himself the honor of defeating the Soviet regime, and each in isolation failed. The Red Army portrayed itself as fighting not for a minority government but for the people of Russia against White generals whose only program was reaction and whose only interest was the restoration of their own former privileges. The chaos of the Civil War offered Western governments an opportunity that was never to return to undo the October Revolution. They failed to take it. Until victory over Germany had been secured in November 1918, the main aim of Allied intervention was not ideological, as

Soviet historians have traditionally claimed, but military: to ease

the pressure on the Western Front at a critical

peace of Brest-Litovsk enabled the

Germans

moment

in the war.

to transfer large

The

numbers

of troops from the Eastern Front and launch their biggest offensive in the

West

since the beginning of the war.

To

the British commander-in-

Haig it seemed that the supreme crisis of the war had come. He told his troops in a famous order of the day on April 1 1 "Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our chief Field Marshal

cause, each one of us

must

fight

on to the end." By June 1918 the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

48

Germans were on

the

Marne and

threatening Paris.

The

fate of the

Bolshevik regime in the East was, by comparison, of only minor importance.

Though

the tide of

war

in the

of the summer, the speed of the

West turned rapidly

final

German

in the course

collapse in the

autumn

took the Allies by surprise.

The

inept plots against the Soviet regime devised by Western

diplomats and intelligence

officers in

Russia during the

summer of 1918

never posed any serious threat to the Bolsheviks. Indeed, the Cheka

seemed

positively anxious to encourage the plotters to enlarge their

plots in order to

win a propaganda victory by exposing them. Even

after

the armistice with Germany, when Western governments gave more serious attention to overthrowing the Bolshevik regime, their attempts

do so were at best half-hearted. Two or three Allied divisions landed Gulf of Finland in 1919 could probably have forced their way to Moscow and overthrown the Soviet government. But in the aftermath of the First World War not even two or three divisions could be found. Those troops that were sent served mainly to discredit the White cause and thus actually to assist the Bolsheviks. They were too few to affect the outcome of the Civil War but sufficient to allow the Bolsheviks to brand their opponents as the tools of Western imperialism. to

in the

Most Bolsheviks, however, imagined themselves onslaught from the

full

The Cheka proudly it

facing a determined

might of Western capitalism.

KGB

claimed, and the

still

believes, that

played a crucial part in defending the young Soviet state against a

gigantic conspiracy by

Western

capital

and

its

secret services. In 1921

Lenin paid tribute to the Cheka as "our devastating weapon against countless conspiracies and countless attempts against Soviet

people

who

power by

are infinitely stronger than us":

Gentlemen

capitalists of

Russia and abroad!

We know

that

it is

not possible for you to love this establishment. Indeed,

it is

not! It has

machinations

been able to counter your intrigues and your

like

no one

else

when you had surrounded

when you were smothering us, when you

us with invaders, and

were organizing internal conspiracies and would stop in order to wreck our peaceful work. 32

at

no

crime

Though were

the conspiracies of Western diplomats and intelligence services

far feebler

than Lenin alleged or the

Cheka did indeed achieve

KGB

still

supposes, the

a series of successes against them. Its most

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"

49

weapon was the use of penetration agents ("moles") and agents provocateurs of the kind pioneered by the Okhrana. The Cheka's successful

first

major penetration of a Western embassy, however, went badly

wrong.

The only power with whom

the Bolshevik regime had formal

diplomatic relations was Imperial Germany, with

envoys after Brest-Litovsk.

On

whom

April 23, 1918, a

it

exchanged

German embassy

Moscow. Six days later a member of Mirbach's mission wrote in his diary: "Here we must be ever on the alert for approaches by agents and provocateurs. The Soviet authorities have rapidly revived the former Tsarist Okhrana ... in at least equal size and in more merciless temper, if in somewhat different form." Penetration of the German embassy was made the responsibility of a counterespionage section set up in May 1918 within the Cheka's Department for Combating Counterrevolution. In 1921-22 the coununder Count Wilhelm Mirbach installed

itself in

terespionage section was to be expanded to form the Counterespionage

Department or KRP, the ancestor of today's Second Chief Directorate KGB. The first head of the section, a twenty-year-old Left Socialist Revolutionary (LSR) named Yakov Blyumkin, was probably the youngest section chief in KGB history. Blyumkin successfully penetrated the German embassy by recruiting Count Robert Mirbach, who was an Austrian relative of the German ambassador and had become a Russian prisoner of war. In June Blyumkin extracted from Mirbach a signed undertaking to supply the Cheka with secret intelligence on Germany and the German embassy. 33

in the

Dzerzhinsky, however, had been unwise to entrust the penetration of the bitterly

German embassy

to

Blyumkin, for the LSRs remained

opposed to the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

On

July 4 the

LSR

German ambaswould thus dramatically bring to an end Bolshevik "appeasement" of the Germans, renew the war on the Eastern Front, and advance the cause of world revolution. The assassination was entrusted to Blyumkin and an LSR photographer working under him in the Cheka, Nikolai Andreev. On the morning of July 6 Blyumkin prepared a document on Cheka notepaper with the forged signatures of Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka secretary authorizing himself and Andreev to hold talks with the German ambassador. Dzerzhinsky's LSR deputy, Aleksandrovich, was then brought into the plot by Blyumkin and he added the official Cheka seal. The same afternoon Blyumkin and Andreev drove to the German Central Committee approved a plot to assassinate the sador, in the belief that they

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

50

embassy and secured a meeting with the ambassador on the pretext of Count Robert Mirbach. Blyumkin

discussing the case of his relative later

claimed that he himself

fired the revolver shots that killed the

ambassador. According to the evidence of embassy

Blyumkin's three shots

all

staff,

however,

missed their target and Count Wilhelm

Mirbach was gunned down by Andreev. 34

The Cheka's

early career as "the shield

and sword of the Revo-

lution" thus almost ended in disaster. Instead of defending the

Communist

new

became the instrument of its destruction. Lenin telegraphed Stalin that Mirbach's assassination had brought Russia within "a hair's-breadth" of renewed war with Germany. The assassination was followed by an LSR rising, in which the Cheka's Lubyanka headquarters was seized and Dzerzhinsky taken prisoner. But the LSRs had no clear plan of campaign and their rising was crushed within twenty-four hours by Lettish troops loyal to the Communists. On July 8, Dzerzhinsky stepped down from the Cheka state, in

leadership at his

July 1918

own

it

nearly

request while a commission of inquiry investi-

gated the circumstances of the rising and the

Cheka was purged of

LSRs. By the time Dzerzhinsky was reinstated as chairman on August 22, the

Cheka had become an

use of terror against

its

exclusively

political

Communist agency, whose

opponents was no longer restrained by

the moderating influence of the LSRs.

"We

represent in ourselves

organized terror," said Dzerzhinsky. "This must be said very clearly." 35

Lenin took an

active, if naive, interest in the application of

technology as well as terror to the hunt for counterrevolutionaries.

He

was attracted by the idea that a large electromagnet could be devised that would detect concealed weapons in house-to-house searches, and pressed the idea on the Cheka. Dzerzhinsky, however, was unimpressed. "Magnets," he told Lenin, "are not much use in searches. We have tested them." But he agreed as an experiment to take large magnets on house searches in the hope that counterrevolutionaries would be frightened into handing over their weapons themselves. 36 The experiment was soon abandoned.

The Cheka's

penetration of Allied missions and intelligence networks Russia ended more successfully than its operations against the German embassy. The still regards as one of its great past triumphs in

KGB

the Cheka's uncovering in the

summer

of 1918 of the so-called "Lock-

hart plot," involving British, French, and secret agents.

American diplomats and Robert Bruce Lockhart, formerly acting British consul-

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"

51

Moscow, was an able but erratic member of the consular service, whose career had twice been interrupted by his complicated love affairs. At the beginning of 1918, after the withdrawal of the British ambassador, Lockhart was sent back to Russia to make unofficial contact with the Bolshevik regime. He achieved little. The general in prerevolutionary

—

aim of his mission to persuade the Bolsheviks to continue the war with Germany by promising them Allied aid ended in failure. Even after the peace of Brest-Litovsk, however, Lockhart did original

—

He

not immediately lose hope.

peace treaty, there were resistance to

"still

reported to

London

Germany." Trotsky, the commissar

Chicherin, his successor as commissar for foreign to

that, despite the

considerable opportunities of organizing for war, affairs,

and Georgi

both anxious

keep open communications with London, encouraged Lockhart to

believe that Brest-Litovsk might not last long. Lockhart, however, lost the ear

be bad,"

of his government. "Although Mr. Lockhart's advice

commented one Foreign

accused of having followed

it."

Once Lockhart himself

Office official acidly,

had

may

"we cannot be

37

lost

hope of reviving the war on the

Eastern Front, he changed rapidly from pro-Bolshevik diplomat to anti-Bolshevik conspirator.

By mid-May he was

in contact

with agents

of the anti-Bolshevik underground led by the former Socialist Revolutionary terrorist Boris Savinkov, organizer of the prewar assassinations

of Plehve and the

Grand Duke

Sergei. In his

memoirs Lockhart

later

London he forwarded without comment

denied giving Savinkov any encouragement. His telegrams to tell

a different story.

On May

23, 1918,

by one of Savinkov's agents "to murder all Bolshevik leaders on night of Allies landing and to form a Government which will be in reality a military dictatorship." By now Lockhart had become an ardent supporter of Allied military interven-

to the Foreign Office a plan supplied

tion to help

government,

overthrow the Communist regime. As yet the British still

preoccupied by the problems of winning the war with

Germany, was not. The Secret

Intelligence Service, then

known

as

Mile, added

further to the confusion caused by Lockhart. In addition to the

Mile

commander, Lieutenant Ernest Boyce, who remained nominally in charge of secret-service work in Russia, several other officers arrived to try their luck in the early months of 1918. Lockhart formed 'a very poor opinion" of their work. "However brave and however gifted as station

linguists," they were, in his opinion, "frequently incapable of

a reliable political judgment."

forming

They were deceived by forged documents

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

52

alleging that the

Communist

leaders were in the pay of the

Germans

and by false reports of regiments of German prisoners of war in Siberia

armed by the Bolsheviks. Mile was still a peripheral element in British Cheka persuaded itself, the powerful arm of a secret strategy drawn up at the very center of Whitehall's

foreign policy rather than, as the

corridors of power.

The modern

British secret service, the forerunner of today's

was founded only in 1909. Until the outbreak of war it remained a tiny, underfunded agency unable to afford a single full-time station SIS,

chief abroad.

As

a secret report later acknowledged, because of

shortage of funds, until 1914 "use had to be

whose employment

as a class has by

made

war experience been

demonstrated to be undesirable." During the First World

underwent both a considerable expansion and a tion.

By

the beginning of 1918

it

its

of casual agents clearly

War Mile

partial professionaliza-

controlled a network of over four

hundred Belgian and French agents reporting regularly and accurately on German troop movements in occupied Belgium and northern France.

main successes were on the Western Front. Russia, by comparison, was still a sideshow. Mile officers in Russia had a good deal in common with the enthusiastic amateurs and serving officers used for secret service work in Victorian and EdBoth Mile's

wardian Britain service.

priorities

in the

and

its

days before the founding of a professional secret

Their swashbuckling adventures had

little

discernible influence

on British policy to Communist Russia. The Cheka, however, saw their sometimes eccentric exploits as evidence not of confusion or amateurism but of a deep-laid, labyrinthine plot by Western intelligence services.

38

Though Lockhart had Russia, the sheer audacity of

a low opinion of

its

Mile

operations in

most extrovert agent, Sidney

Reilly,

took his breath away. Reilly had been born Sigmund Rosenblum, the only son of a wealthy Jewish family in Russian Poland, in 1874. During the 1890s he broke off contact with his family and emigrated to London.

Thereafter he became a self-confident, intrepid international adven-

who wove web of fantasy that sometimes deceived

turer, fluent in several languages, expert in sexual seduction,

around

his cosmpolitan career a

Reilly himself

and has since ensnared most of those who have written

about him. Though a tradecraft

fantasist, Reilly possessed a flair for intelligence

combined with an

indifference to danger that

ration of both Sir Mansfield

Cumming,

the

first

won

the admi-

head of the Secret

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" Intelligence

Service,

53

and Winston Churchill. Lockhart described

Reilly's flamboyant personality as a mixture of "the artistic tempera-

ment of the Jew with the devil-may-care daring of the Irishman." 39 Reilly, claims vice,

one bestselling history of the British Secret Ser-

"wielded more power, authority and influence than any other

was an expert assassin "by poisoning, stabbing, shooting and and possessed "eleven passports and a wife to go with 40 each." The facts of Reilly's career, though on a somewhat less epic scale, are still remarkable. Before the First World War, he had established himself in St. Petersburg as a successful businessman and bigamist, who was also employed by Cumming as a part-time "casual spy,"

throttling,"

agent."

When

Reilly returned to Russia in the spring of 1918 with the

code name ST

1,

adventure to low

his exploits farce.

sometimes crossed the border from high

The Cheka, not

surprisingly, failed to see the

joke.

Reilly teristic

tries

announced

his arrival in

Moscow on May

bravado by marching up to the Kremlin

7 with charac-

gates, telling the sen-

he was an emissary from Lloyd George, and demanding to see

Lenin personally. Remarkably, he managed to get as far as one of Lenin's leading aides, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich,

standably bemused.

The Commissariat

who was

for Foreign Affairs called

under-

Lock-

hart to inquire whether Bonch-Bruyevich's visitor was an impostor.

Lockhart

later

admitted that he "nearly blurted out that [Reilly] must

be a Russian masquerading as an Englishman or else a discovering from Boyce, the British agent,

Lockhart

Mile

lost his

madman." On

station chief, that Reilly

temper,

summoned

was a

Reilly to his office,

"dressed him down like a schoolmaster and threatened to have him sent home." But, recalled Lockhart, Reilly was "so ingenious in his excuses that in the end he made me laugh." Reilly then adopted a new disguise as a Levantine Greek, recruited further mistresses to assist him in his work, and began plotting Lenin's overthrow in earnest. 41 Reilly still tends to bemuse Soviet intelligence specialists who study his bizarre career. According to a 1979 official Soviet history of Military Chekists, "rich with heroic deeds," but guaranteed to "contain

nothing sensational or imaginary," Reilly was born in Odessa of an

and a Russian mother. The same "strictly documenhim as the Mile "main resident" (head of station) in Russia, a post actually held by Ernest Boyce. 42 Reilly's career has a particular fascination for the present chairman of the KGB, General Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov. In 1979, while "Irish captain"

tary" account also misidentifies

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

54

head of the First Chief (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate, his probably stimulated by a recent in-house history of the

interest

KGB, Kryuch-

kov summoned all the books on Reilly from the FCD library. "And," 43 said one of the librarians, "he seems to be reading them." The most celebrated of Reilly 's colleagues in Mile's Russian

code-named IK 8, was, and as bold as Reilly" and "spoke "Jolly George Hill," as Kim Philby later de-

operations, Captain (later Brigadier) G. A. Hill, in Lockhart's opinion, "as brave

Russian just as well." 44

scribed him, 45 considered his days as a British spy in Russia "a joyful

adventure in the pages of my

life."

His boyhood travels with his father,

"an English pioneer merchant of the best type" whose business interests

had stretched from Siberia to ing. Hill arrived in

to join a

him what he considered

Persia, gave

better preparation for espionage than

any amount of professional

train-

Russia two months before the Bolshevik Revolution

Royal Flying Corps mission, but began working for Mile

the spring of 1918. Like Lockhart, he hoped at

down and

Brest-Litovsk would break

first

in

that the treaty of

that the Bolsheviks could be

persuaded to rejoin the war against Germany.

Hill's

memoirs, grandly

Go Spy the Land, describe with an exuberant lack of modesty how he won Trotsky's confidence and helped to mastermind the early

entitled

development of both Soviet military intelligence and the Cheka: Lectures to Trotsky, theater and supper parties did not interfere with the

work

had planned.

I

First of all I helped the

Bolshevik military headquarters to organize an Intelligence Section for the purpose of identifying

German

units

on the

Russian Front and for keeping the troop movements under close observation.

.

.

.

Secondly,

I

organized a Bolshevik

counterespionage section to spy on the vice

and Missions

in

German

Secret Ser-

Petrograd and Moscow. 46

contemporary reports to Mile and the War Office tell a less sensational, though still impressive tale. He "got the Moscow District Hill's

Commander to organize a Bolshevik identifications section German units], and promised them every assistance from En-

Military [for

gland." But there

is no evidence that, as Hill claimed in his memoirs, he personally helped to found the section. Nor is it likely that Hill played any part in founding the Cheka's Counterespionage Section in

May

19 18. 47

He

later

admitted that he never met

Blyumkin. 48 But there

may

well have been

some

its first

head,

Yakov

limited exchange of

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"

German

between Hill and the Cheka.

intelligence

When

Moscow

officer for the Special

Operations Executive. According to

"The Russians

him with

the

summer

hailed

Anglo-Soviet

was established on a more substantial

intelligence collaboration

during the Second World War, Hill returned to

of 1918 Hill's

delight.

first

They knew

all

55

scale

as liaison

Kim

Philby,

about him." 49 By

brief experience of cooperation with

come to an end. Having despaired, like Lockhart, of persuading the Communist regime to reenter the war with Germany, he set up a network cf his own to identify German and Soviet intelligence had

Austrian units on the Eastern Front and, with the help of "patriotic

Russian

prepare for sabotage against them. 50

officers," to

By

July 1918 Lockhart himself, despite his later denials,

was

Communist Moscow, Fernand

also deeply involved in supporting plots to overthrow the

regime. Together with the French consul-general in

Grenard, he handed over ten million rubles to the counterrevolutionary National Center group in Moscow, loosely linked to Savinkov in the

Northeast and the White

Army

of the Tsarist General Alekseev in

Kuban. But neither Lockhart nor Grenard was any match for Dzerzhinsky. In June Dzerzhinsky dispatched two Chekists of Lettish origin, Yan Buikis and Yan Sprogis, using the aliases Shmidken and Bredis, to Petrograd, where they posed as representatives of the Moscow counterrevolutionary underground seeking Allied support. There they obtained an introduction to Captain Cromie, R.N., naval attache at the British

ambassador's Baltic Fleet

Cromie

if

embassy,

who had

stayed on in Petrograd after the

recall

with the principal aim of blowing up the Russian

there

was any danger of its falling into German hands. and Sprogis to Reilly, who was deeply

in turn introduced Buikis

impressed by their reports of disaffection

Moscow. Reilly saw Communist regime.

The

in the Letts the

among

the Lettish troops in

key to the overthrow of the

Moscow. Whoever conThe Letts were not Bolsheviks; they were Bolshevik servants because they had no other resort. They were foreign hirelings. Foreign hirelings serve for money. They are at the disposal of the highest bidder. If I could buy the Letts my task would be easy. Letts were the only soldiers in

trolled the Letts controlled the capital.

Buikis and Sprogis allowed themselves to be persuaded by Cromie and Reilly to call

on Lockhart

in

Moscow. 51

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

56

Preparations for an anti-Bolshevik coup in

Moscow

coincided

with the beginning of British military intervention against the Bol-

A company of marines commanded by Major General Frederick Poole had landed at the Arctic port of Murmansk on March 6, only three days after the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. But the marines had not been sent to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Their landing was intended instead to prevent the Germans from getting the vast quantities of Allied war materials shipped to Murmansk for use on sheviks in northern Russia.

the Eastern Front. Allied intervention changed in character

second landing

at

when Poole made

a

Archangel on August 2 with a detachment of Royal

Marines, a French battalion, and

American

fifty

sailors.

The

ostensible

purpose of the Archangel landing was, once again, to prevent war supplies from falling into

German

with an anti-Bolshevik coup.

hands, but

Two

it

was timed

to coincide

groups of Allied agents, landed

were caught and

secretly a fortnight before the arrival of the marines,

imprisoned by the Bolsheviks. But a successful coup was carried out on the night of August officer

1

by Captain Georgi Chaplin, a Russian naval

formerly attached to the Royal Navy,

who was

almost certainly

acting in concert with Poole's intelligence chief, Colonel C.

Thornhill (formerly of Mile).

When

J.

M.

Poole's troops landed next day,

they did so at the invitation of a self-styled anti-Bolshevik "Supreme

Administration of the Northern Region." 52 Curiously, the Allied landing at Archangel, where Poole established himself as a virtual viceroy ruling by decree, did not immediately

cause an open breach between Britain and the Bolsheviks. Office cabled

Lockhart on August

"You should

8:

The Foreign

so far as possible

maintain existing relations with the Bolshevik Government. 53 Rupture, or declaration of war, should come,

if

come

it

must, from Bolsheviks

not from the Allies." During the second week of August the Cheka's Lettish agents provocateurs, Buikis and Sprogis, called on Lockhart at his

Moscow

office

and presented a

claimed to be "always on

my

inspected the letter carefully.

letter

from Cromie. Lockhart, who

guard against agents provocateurs,"

He was

quickly reassured. Both the writ-

ing and the spelling were unmistakably Cromie's:

he was making his

bang the dore officer."

[sic]

own arrangements

"The expression that and hoped 'to

to leave Russia

before he went out' was typical of this very gallant

54

Shortly afterward Buikis brought along to a second meeting with Lockhart another agent provocateur, Colonel Eduard Berzin, de-

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" scribed by Lockhart as "a

and hard,

features

man

powerfully-built

tall,

steely eyes, ... in

command

regiments which formed the Praetorian

57

with clear-cut

of one of the Lettish

Guard of

the Soviet Govern-

ment." 55 This time Reilly and Grenard, the French consul-general, were present as well. All were persuaded by Berzin that the Lettish troops

were ready to join an anti-Bolshevik revolt and that "everything could be arranged

tions

in the

space of about

five to six

weeks." At Lockhart's

was agreed that Reilly should "take charge" of all negotiawith the Letts, conducted from about August 20 onward in a safe

proposal,

it

house provided by the Cheka. 56 To finance the coup, Reilly provided 57 1,200,000 rubles, which Berzin passed on to the Cheka.

French and American agents were also involved, like Mile, in On August 25, at a meeting of Allied

assisting anti-Bolshevik groups.

agents at the

Moscow

United States consul-general, de Witt

office of the

Poole, also attended by the French military attache General Lavergne (but not by Lockhart),

it

was agreed that

after the

impending departure

of the remaining Allied diplomatic staff from Russia, espionage and

sabotage would be conducted by stay-behind Allied agents: Reilly for Britain, Colonel

Henri de Vertement for France and Xenophon de

Blumental Kalamatiano (an American of Russian-Greek descent) for the United States. a

Cheka

agent:

Among

those present at the meeting, however, was

Rene Marchand,

a journalist attached to the French

who had become a secret supporter of the Bolsheviks and became a founder member of the French Communist Party. 58 mission,

On August

28 Reilly

with anti-Bolshevik Letts in

left

later

for Petrograd to hold secret meetings

company with

the

Cheka agent provoca-

teur Colonel Berzin. 59

For the moment Dzerzhinsky preferred to bide his time and give the Allied conspirators in Moscow and Petrograd enough rope to hang themselves. This leisurely game of cat and mouse was cut short on August 30 when the head of the Petrograd Cheka, M. Uritsky, was assassinated by a military cadet, and Lenin himself was shot and seriously wounded by a possibly deranged Socialist Revolutionary named Fanya (Dora) Kaplan. These two unconnected incidents five hundred polititwo days. 60 In the early hours of August 31, according to the Soviet version of events, "Cheka agents started the liquidation of the Lockhart conspiracy." Though the Cheka failed to catch Reilly, it caught the American agent Kalamatiano, then posing as a Russian engineer under the alias Serpovsky, and discovered in a hollow cane in his apartment a list

unleashed a reign of terror. In Petrograd alone over cal prisoners

were executed

in

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

58

of the

money he had

61 distributed to Russian agents.

Though Lockhart,

unlike Reilly and Kalamatiano, could claim diplomatic immunity, he

was awakened

in his

rough voice ordering

up

apartment

at

about 3:30 a.m. on August 31 by "a

me to get up at once." He opened his eyes,

"looked

and discovered about ten armed

into the steely barrel of a revolver,"

Chekists in his bedroom.

He was byanka

driven with his assistant Captain Hicks to the Lu-

to be interrogated

by Dzerzhinsky's

assistant, the Lett

and waving as a poet's

Peters, "his black hair, long

.

.

.

brushed back

over a high forehead," his expression "grim and formidable."

know met

the Kaplan

woman?" asked

her, according to his

Peters.

Yakov

"Do you

Though Lockhart had never

account of the interrogation he claimed

diplomatic immunity and replied that Peters had no right to question

him. reply.

"Where is Reilly?" Peters continued. Again Lockhart made no Then Peters produced from a folder a pass to General Poole in

Archangel, which Lockhart had given the Cheka's Lettish agents. "Is that your writing?" he asked.

For the

first

time Lockhart realized that

Buikis and Sprogis were agents provocateurs, but he that Colonel Berzin

was

also part of the

Cheka

still

plot.

failed to grasp

Once

again, he

informed Peters "with studious politeness" that he could answer no questions. 62

Peters later gave a rather different account of the interrogation

of Lockhart, who, he claimed, "was so frightened that he did not even present his diplomatic papers. Probably the poor English diplomatic representative thought he

was being accused of Lenin's murder, and he

probably had a bad conscience." 63 Lockhart himself believed that the

main purpose of Peters's questions was to link him with Fanya Kaplan's attempt on Lenin's life. His immediate anxiety, however, was the notebook in his breast pocket. The Cheka agents who arrested him ransacked his apartment but failed to notice the notebook in his jacket,

which recorded "in cryptic form" the money disbursed by Lockhart no doubt including the funds given to Savinkov and Reilly. Expecting any moment, Lockhart asked to go With two armed guards standing over him, he coolly to be searched at

rassing pages from his notebook

At about 6 a.m.

a

woman

and used them

to the lavatory.

tore the embar-

as toilet paper.

64

dressed in black, with black hair and

"great black rings under her eyes," was brought to join Lockhart and

Hicks

in their

room

in the

Lubyanka.

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"

We

59

was Kaplan. Doubtless the Bolsheviks hoped that she would give us some sign of recognition. Her composure was unnatural. She went to the window and leaning her guessed

it

chin upon her hand, looked out into the daylight.

And

there

she remained, motionless, speechless, apparently resigned to her

fate, until

presently the sentries

came and took her away.

Fanya Kaplan was shot four days later in a Kremlin courtyard, still uncertain whether her attempt on Lenin's life had succeeded. At 9 a.m. Lockhart and Hicks were freed from the Lubyanka, and left to make their own way home. Back at Lockhart's flat, they discovered that his mistress, Mura Beckendorff, had been arrested by the Cheka. 65 Reilly,

meanwhile, was

Petrograd, probably unaware of

in

Lockhart's arrest. At midday on August 31, three hours after Lockhart's release,

station chief.

he arrived

at the

apartment of Ernest Boyce, the Mile

There he outlined the plan

for a rising

by the Lettish

troops guarding the Kremlin. According to Reilly's account of their

Boyce described the plan as "extremely risky" but "worth failed, however, he said that the responsibility would be Boyce then left for the British embassy, intending to bring

discussion, trying." If Reilly's.

it

Captain Cromie back to his apartment to be briefed by Reilly. 66 By the time he arrived, Cromie was dead.

A

crowd

led

by Cheka agents,

enraged by a rumor that Uritsky's assassin had been given shelter in the embassy, stormed into the building. Cromie confronted the mob, was told to get out of the

way or "be

shot like a dog," opened

killed in the gunfight that followed.

fire,

and was

67

A Cheka raid in the early hours of September 1 on the apartment of the French agent de Vertement, probably after information had been supplied by the Cheka informant Rene Marchand, led to the discovery of explosives intended for use in sabotage operations. 68

Though de Vertement himself escaped

capture,

Sovnarkom announced

triumphantly next day:

Today, September

French diplomats,

2,

the conspiracy organized by Anglo-

head of which was the chief of the French consul-general Grenard, the French General Lavergne, and others, was liquiat the

British Mission, Lockhart, the

dated.

The purpose of

this

conspiracy was to organize the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

60

capture of the Council of People's Commissars and the proc-

lamation of a military dictatorship

in

Moscow;

this

was

to

be done by bribing Soviet troops.

The statements made no mention of the

fact that the plan to use Soviet

troops (the Lettish battalions) in a military coup had been devised by

Cheka agents provocateurs. It also sought to excuse the violation of Lockhart's diplomatic immunity by claiming implausibly that his identity had not been clear when he was arrested: At the secret headquarters of the conspirators an Englishman was arrested who after being brought before the Special Investigating Commission, said that he

was the

British diplo-

matic representative, Lockhart. After the identity of the arrested Lockhart

had been

established, he

was immediately

released.

The Sovnarkom statement identified as

did,

however, correctly reveal that Reilly,

"one of Lockhart's agents," had provided 1,200,000 rubles

to finance the plot. It also correctly claimed that other Allied missions

were involved. Though Rene Marchand was not publicly a

identified as

Cheka informant, he gave an account of the meeting of Allied agents

held on August 25 to discuss espionage and sabotage in a letter of

Raymond Poincare. A copy of the was conveniently discovered, no doubt by prior arrangement, in the course of a Cheka search and published in the Communist press. 69 In the Sovnarkom statement of September 2, as in subsequent

protest to the French president, letter

Soviet pronouncements, Lockhart

the Allied conspiracy. Lockhart's crisis,

was presented

as the ringleader of

own main concern

at this stage in the

however, was for the safety of his imprisoned mistress.

On

Sep-

tember 4 he went to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to plead, without success, for Mura's release. Then, impulsively, he decided to appeal directly to Peters and walked to the Lubyanka, where he was

immediately aware that his arrival "caused some excitement and much whispering among the guards in the entrance hall." Peters listened

Mura and told him that his assurance no conspiracy would be carefully considsome trouble," he continued. "My men have

patiently to Lockhart's plea for

that she ered.

had been involved

"You have saved me

in

been looking for you for the past hour. arrest." Despite opposition

I have a warrant for your from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs,

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"

61

which paid greater heed than the Cheka to the principle of diplomatic immunity, Lockhart was arrested on the spot and spent the next month in captivity.

On arrest of

70

September

5,

presumably

in

an attempt to

justify the re-

Lockhart on the previous day, Izvestia published a statement

signed by Dzerzhinsky and Zinoviev, the Petrograd Party boss, that

went much further than the Sovnarkom statement of the 2nd. The English and French were accused of being the "organizers" of the

attempt on Lenin's

life

and the "real murderers" of Uritsky: "They

have murdered Comrade Uritsky because he brought together the 71 threads of an English conspiracy in Petrograd." In reality the Cheka's

agents provocateurs had been trying without

much

success to persuade

English agents to organize an assassination plot, which could then have

been publicly exposed.

On

about August 22 Berzin tried to persuade

Reilly that, for the anti-Bolshevik coup to succeed, there were two

pressing reasons

1.

2.

why Lenin and Trotsky would have

to be assassinated:

Their marvelous oratorical powers would so act on the

psychology of the

men who went

was not advisable

to risk [arrest].

The

to arrest

them

that

it

two of the leaders would create a panic so that there would be no resistance. assassination of

Reilly told Hill that "he

had been very firm

such a course and that he would

in

in dissuading [Berzin]

no way support

it."

The

from

right policy,

insisted, was "not to make martyrs of the leaders but to hold them up to ridicule before the world." 72 The particular form of ridicule Reilly had in mind was to remove Lenin's and Trotsky's trousers, parade them

he

in their

underpants through the streets of Moscow, and so make them

public laughingstocks. 73 publicize a plot to

Not

surprisingly,

it

did not suit the

remove Lenin's and Trotsky's

Cheka

to

trousers. This eccen-

scheme was thus never included in the list of real and imaginary which British agents were accused. Ernest Boyce, the Mile station chief in Petrograd, may have been less hostile than Reilly and

tric

plots of

Hill to the idea of assassination.

One

of his Russian agents claimed that

Boyce had inquired, probably speculatively, "if he was prepared to do away with one or two prominent members of the Soviet government." When the agent threatened blackmail on September 6 and demanded money not to reveal Boyce's inquiry, it was thought "advisable to pay up rather than having anything fresh brought up against us." 74

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

62

By

the time of the attempted blackmail,

Mile

operations in

Russia had virtually collapsed. Boyce had been arrested and thrown into a hideously

overcrowded

jail.

The Cheka

arrested several of

from and was smuggled out of Russia on board a Dutch freighter. Hill too avoided capture but, after eighteen of his agents and couriers had been caught and executed, concluded that he would have to seek further Reilly's mistresses but Reilly himself obtained a forged passport

Hill

instructions

in London in order to "start afresh with new new headquarters." Lockhart, unlike Boyce, spent most

and funds

personnel and

of his captivity in the relative comfort of the apartment of a former lady-in-waiting in the Kremlin. In the course of his imprisonment his mistress, briefly

"was

Mura, was released and allowed

was

to visit him. Berzin

lodged in the same apartment as a stool pigeon, but Lockhart

afraid to exchange a

word with him." In October Lockhart,

Boyce, and Hill were allowed to return

home together with

personnel in exchange for the release of Soviet

officials

other Allied

held in London.

Lockhart's farewell to Peters was strangely amicable. When came on September 28 to announce that Lockhart was to be set free, he gave him a signed photograph, showed him photographs of his English wife in London, and asked him to deliver a letter to her. Then Peters

Peters had second thoughts. "No," he said, "I shan't trouble you.

soon as you're out of here you'll blaspheme and curse

me as

enemy." Lockhart told him not to be a fool: "Politics apart, no grudge. I would remember his kindness to Mura all my the letter." Peters told Lockhart he

would do

As

your worst I

bore him

life. I

took

better to stay in Russia:

"You can be happy and make your own life. We can give you work to 75 is doomed anyway." What Peters omitted to tell Lockhart was that he had evidence that Mura was a German spy. He later do, capitalism

claimed that he did not mention this even at the conspiracy" in December for fear that

it

trial

of "the Lockhart

would damage Lockhart's

career. Peters eventually published this allegation in 1924, however, in

what he called the "rabid anti-Soviet campaign" being conducted by Lockhart in England. 76 protest against

After his release, Lockhart returned to London. So did Boyce

however, on reaching Finland, was ordered by

Cum-

ming, chief of Mile, to return to Russia for a few weeks to

assist

and

Reilly. Hill,

anti-Bolshevik groups in sabotage operations.

mendation, Hill was awarded the

DSO

On Cumming's

and Reilly the

MC

recom-

for their

Russian exploits. In December Lockhart, Reilly, Grenard, and de Vertement were sentenced to death in absentia by the Supreme Revolu-

The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"

63

Moscow. Kalamatiano, the American agent arrested on August 31, remained in jail in Moscow. He was twice told he was being taken out to be shot, in unsuccessful attempts to make him tionary Tribunal in

talk,

then reprieved and finally allowed back to the United States in

1921.

77

The Cheka regarded

its

"liquidation of the Lockhart conspir-

acy" as a triumph of heroic proportions. The could say without exaggeration," claims an

KGB

"One

does.

still

"that the

official history,

was equivalent Cheka had won

shattering blow dealt by the Chekists to the conspirators to victory in a

major military

only a minor skirmish. tion of capitalist

Its

battle."

78

In reality, the

opponents had been not a determined

governments but a group of adventurous,

naive Western diplomats and secret agents devices in the chaotic early

rule.

By

Moscow

far the

—the plan a — had been mounted by the Cheka

sophisticated part of the Lockhart conspiracy Lettish troops in

own

largely to their

left

months of Bolshevik

coali-

politically

most

revolt

for

itself.

by

The

Cheka's mastery of the use of penetration agents and agents provocateurs demonstrated during "the Lockhart conspiracy," however,

make

possible a

gence Service

more

in the

was

to

decisive victory over the British Secret Intelli-

course of the 1920s. 79

By the beginning of 1920 the White

forces, though not yet finally no longer posed a serious threat to the Bolshevik regime. A decree signed by Lenin and Dzerzhinsky on January 17 announced the end of the death penalty for "enemies of the Soviet authorities." Within three weeks Lenin had had second thoughts. On February 6 he told a

defeated,

conference of provincial Chekas that the death penalty was simply "a

matter of expediency" and likely to be needed to deal with further "counterrevolutionary movements and revolts." 80

The

Polish invasion

of the Ukraine in April 1920 and the six-month Russo-Polish

followed led to the ruthless stamping out by the

war that Cheka of another wave

of real and imaginary conspiracies. According to a tory:

"The

decisive struggle of the organs of the

KGB

Cheka

.

.

official his.

foiled the

plans of the White Poles and their Entente inspirers to undermine the fighting ability of the

Red Army through

espionage, sabotage and

banditry." 81

By was

the end of 1920, Dzerzhinsky's lieutenant

Martyn

Latsis

asserting the Cheka's right to total supervision of Soviet society:

"Counterrevolution has developed everywhere, in manifesting

itself in

the most diverse forms.

all

It is

spheres of our

life,

therefore clear that

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

64

there

is

no sphere of life exempt from Cheka coverage." Latsis's totaliembryo the Stalinist police state that emerged

tarian vision contained in in the 1930s.

The

82

total of

Cheka executions during the period 1917-21 was

probably well over 250,000. 83 By 1921, however, with the Bolshevik victory in the Civil

War now

secure,

many

in the

Party believed that

Cheka had outlived its usefulness. The Cheka predictably disagreed. Though its growth was temporarily stunted and its powers briefly curtailed, it survived in slightly different form. The Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets resolved on December 28, 1921, that "the strengthening of Soviet authority at home and abroad permits the narrowing the

of the functions of the [Cheka] and the

Cheka was replaced by the

its

agencies." 84

On February

1922,

8,

State Political Directorate (Gosudarst-

vennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie or GPU), which was incorporated in the Internal Affairs

Commissariat (NKVD). Dzerzhinsky had been

commissar for internal affairs as well as head of the Cheka since March 1919, and thus retained control of the GPU. On paper at least the powers of the GPU were drastically reduced by comparison with those of the Cheka.

was was

strictly limited to political subversion;

Its

sphere of influence

ordinary criminal justice

to be the responsibility of the law courts

and revolutionary

tribu-

The GPU was given the power only to investigate; it lost the power of summary justice and confinement to concentration camp by adminisnals.

trative order. Gradually,

Cheka's powers.

It

however, the

GPU

recovered most of the

did so with Lenin's blessing; he wrote in

"The law should not

abolish terror: to promise that

May

1922,

would be

self-

delusion or deception." Decrees of August and October 1922 gave the

GPU

the

and in some cases execute counterand certain categories of criminal. the formation of the U.S.S.R. in 1923 the GPU was raised

power

to exile, imprison,

revolutionaries, "bandits,"

On

in status to a federal agency, the Unified State Political Directorate

(Obyeddinenoye

Gosudarstvennoye

Politicheskoye

Upravlenie

or

OGPU). A "judicial collegium" was attached to the OGPU to mete out summary justice to counterrevolutionaries, spies, and terrorists. Whereas the Cheka had been intended as only a temporary expedient its hour of peril, the GPU, OGPU, and

to defend the Revolution in their successors state.

85

were

solidly established at the center of the Soviet

3 Foreign Intelligence and i

i

Active Measures"

the

in

Dzerzhinsky Era

(1919-27) Soviet Russia

beyond

embarked on an ambitious program of covert action

frontiers even before

its

it

began systematic foreign intelligence

While the Cheka during the

collection.

Civil

War was

defending the

Bolshevik regime against a series of real and imaginary conspiracies at

home, the work of Soviet agents abroad was geared to spreading the Revolution.

first

and foremost

The organizer of most of the covert

action,

however, was not the Cheka but the Comintern, the Soviet-dominated

Communist

International,

whose executive committee

(the

ECCI) con-

sidered itself "the general staff of world revolution."

After October 1917 most of the Bolshevik leadership lived in constant expectation that their

own

revolution

would advance across

Europe, then spread around the globe. The crumbling of the great empires of Central Europe during the

final stages

of the war on the

pitch. He wrote on Octo"The international revolution has come so close within the course of one week that we may count on its outbreak during the next

Western Front raised Lenin's hopes to fever ber

1,

1918:

few days.

.

.

.

We

shall all stake

in expediting the revolution

ber

9,

our

lives to

help the

German workers On Novem-

about to begin in Germany."

1

two days before the Armistice, Germany was proclaimed a

65

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

66

republic,

and workers' and

were formed on the Soviet

soldiers' councils

model. Lenin's early hopes, however, were quickly dashed. In January

1919 a Berlin rising supported, though not

initiated,

by the newly

founded German Communist Party (KPD) was crushed, and

its

two

Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were brumurdered by right-wing army officers. Though the murders de-

charismatic leaders, Rosa tally

stroyed the

KPD's

already slender prospects of replacing the socialist

SPD as the main party of the left, much

easier.

as the

most powerful Marxist

By

they

the time of her death critic

dictation to it by Moscow Rosa Luxemburg had emerged

made

of the Bolshevik regime, accusing

Lenin of creating not dictatorship by the proletariat but dictatorship over the proletariat. She was perhaps the one foreign

up

ble of standing

to

Communist capa-

Lenin and offering more than token opposition to

the transformation of the

Communist

International into a tool of Soviet

foreign policy. 2

The founding congress of the Comintern held at Moscow early March 1919 was a mostly fraudulent piece of Russian revolutionary theater. Only five delegates arrived from abroad. Most of the remainder in

were handpicked by the Bolshevik Central Committee from supporters in Moscow.

Some had never been

foreign

its

to the countries they

were

supposed to represent, and some of the parties of which they were

much of the European left such For countless left-wing militants Moscow had become the socialist New Jerusalem, and the birth of the Comintern only strengthened their enthusiasm. The French Commu-

delegates did not yet exist. But for technicalities scarcely mattered.

nist

Louis-Oscar Frossard spoke for

many

of them:

Assailed by a world of enemies, half starving amid anarchy

and turmoil, Russia was struggling to build that land of justice and harmony that we had all dreamed of. Outlawed and hated everywhere else, there Socialism was triumphant.

What

the Socialists of every country had been wishing for,

wanting, preparing

for,

waiting for in vain, the Socialists of

Over waved the red flag of the more exploitation of man by man! Capital-

Russia, driven by an implacable will, were achieving.

the ancient empire of the Tsars International.

ism had

No

at last

been throttled, floored, dispossessed!

Onward! Mankind was not doomed, day was dawning! 3

for over Russia a

.

.

.

new

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

67

The Comintern's continued faith in world revolution was matched by the foreboding of some Western statesmen. A fortnight after its first congress had dispersed, Lloyd George warned the French prime minister

Georgi Clemenceau:

The whole of Europe is filled with The whole existing order in .

.

.

economic aspects tion

is

the spirit of revolution. its

political, social

and

questioned by the masses of the popula-

from one end of Europe

to the other.

For a few heady weeks the Revolution seemed to be spreading even it. Without prompting from

before the Comintern had begun to export

Moscow, in

were declared

soviet republics

Bavaria on April

7.

in

Hungary on March

21 and

Grigori Zinoviev, the president of the Comintern,

forecast that within a year all

Europe would be Communist. But the

Bolsheviks were forced to stand helplessly by as the Bavarian Soviet

was crushed

after less than a

irregular troops,

and again

in

month by a combination of regular and August as the Hungarian Soviet Republic

was overthrown by a Rumanian invasion. 4 In October 1919 the Comintern established two secret Western European outposts to assist the spread of revolution: the Western European Secretariat (usually abbreviated to WES) in Berlin and the Western Bureau (usually unabbreviated) in Amsterdam. Their heads

Yakov Reich (alias Comrade Thomas) in Berlin, Sebald Rutgers in Amsterdam were personally selected by Lenin in preference to more prominent German and Dutch Communists whom he considered less likely to follow instructions from Moscow. Lenin briefed Reich and

—

Rutgers individually on their clandestine missions, finances, and

initial

contacts.

The Western Bureau under police surveillance.

5

in

On

Amsterdam, however, quickly came

the second day of

its first

secret confer-

ence in February 1920, the Russian delegate, Mikhail Markovich Borodin, in

found the Dutch police recording the proceedings on a Dictaphone

an adjoining apartment.

He rushed into the conference room to shout who arrested all the delegates.

6

a warning, hotly pursued by the police,

Though

the delegates were subsequently released, the British contin-

gent returned

home without

the Comintern funds on which they

had

been counting. 7 In April 1920 the Western Bureau was discontinued.

The

WES

in Berlin

was more

established an elaborate secret network,

successful.

Comrade Thomas

which sent couriers to Moscow

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

68

and elsewhere on diplomatic passports, supplied

false

papers for

Com-

munist militants, and distributed funds to the German and other West

European Communist parties. Since the police paid less attention to women than to men, a number of his couriers were female Party workers, among them the sister of Iosif Stanislavovich Unshlikht, who in April 1921 became Dzerzhinsky's deputy. Thomas demonstrated his technical virtuosity by renting two aircraft and a boat to carry delegates, all supplied with false papers or diplomatic passports, to the

Second Comintern Congress

in Petrograd.

8

The Petrograd Congress adopted "twenty-one

conditions,"

mostly drafted by Lenin, which imposed what amounted to military discipline

on

its

members. All Communist

parties

were required to

operate illegally as well as legally, and "to create a parallel

moment

organization which at the decisive

will help the party to

illegal

do

its

duty to the revolution." 9 Karl Radek, one of the Russian members of the

ECCI,

declared, "Since Russia

is

the only country where the work-

ing class has taken power, the workers of the whole world should 10

Most

now

Communists agreed. Labour Party leaders in Britain fairly described the British Communist Party as "intellectual slaves of Moscow." But it was a servitude freely, even joyously, entered into. One of the more critical British delegates to the become Russian

patriots."

Comintern Congress wrote evident that to

foreign

after his return

from Petrograd:

"It

is fairly

many Communists Russia is not a country to learn from,

but a sacrosanct Holy of Holies to grovel before as a pious

dan faces the Mecca

in his prayers."

Mohamme-

11

Zinoviev told the Comintern Congress that the

ECCI had

not

merely the right but the obligation "to 'meddle' in the work of parties that belong or wish to belong to the

Communist

International."

12

The

principal instruments of such "meddling" were the representatives,

nicknamed "eyes of Moscow,"

Communist the

German

Comintern

sent by the

ECCI

to

member parties and

groups. Paul Levi, the president of the

KPD

and head of

delegation at the Congress, wrote after breaking with the

in 1921:

[These representatives] never work with the leadership of individual

Communist

parties,

but always behind their backs

and against them. They enjoy the confidence of Moscow but the local leaders do not. The Executive Committee [of the Comintern] acts as a Cheka projected outside the Rus.

sian borders.

13

.

.

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

The "eyes of Moscow"

69

on the central committees of the parties to which they were accredited and sent back secret reports, which, according to Comrade Thomas, were seen only by Lenin and the Comintern's 14 Comintern representatives Little Bureau (in effect its Politburo). sat

abroad acted as what the Italian

eminences"

socialist

Giacinto Serrati called "grey

in helping to organize splits in socialist parties,

which

in

1920-21 led to the foundation of new Communist parties in France, Italy,

Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere. The French socialist Andre Le

in 1920 at the socialist congress at Tours that prompted the foundation of the French Communist Party: 'Though I do wish to join the Third International [Comintern], I am not willing to put up with the clandestine surveillance that is going on, surveillance

Troquer complained

even of this congress." 15

The Comintern

emissaries also helped to impose on other

Com-

munist parties the conspiratorial methods practiced by the Bolsheviks in Tsarist Russia.

One of their emissaries' most important functions was from Moscow to Communist parties and the pro-

to transmit funds

Soviet press, often in the form of jewels confiscated from the Tsarist

and bourgeoisie. Exiled grand dukes in Paris and other sometimes claimed (probably mistakenly) to recognize in jewelers' shop windows remnants of the imperial crown jewels. 16 aristocracy

European

capitals

The Finnish Communist Aino Kuusinen, wife of Otto Kuusinen, who in 1921 became the Comintern's secretary-general, later recalled how in the winter of 1920 he financed a secret mission to London by another Finnish Communist, Salme Pekkala: Suddenly Kuusinen produced four large diamonds from his waistcoat pocket and showed them to us

of these

is

worth forty thousand."

which currency

monds money

this referred to.

to Pekkala's wife

and said

I

all,

saying:

"Each

can no longer remember

Then he handed the diawith a smile: "Here's some

for the journey." 17

Another courier used to smuggle Tsarist jewels into Britain was Francis Meynell, a young director of the socialist Daily Herald. Though Meynell was sometimes searched on his return to England, he was never caught. During one "jewel trip" he smuggled two strings of pearls buried in a jar of Danish butter. On another occasion he posted from abroad a large and expensive box of chocolate creams, each containing a pearl or a diamond, to his friend the philosopher Cyril Joad (later star

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

70

of the nell

BBC

to Scotland

Meynell and his "spent a sickly jewels."

Once back in London, MeyYard but searched in vain. Two days later wife recovered the chocolate creams from Joad and hour sucking the chocolates and so retrieving the

radio program Brains Trust).

was taken

18

The

enthusiastic amateurism with

used to finance international revolution

which Tsarist jewels were

led, unsurprisingly, to

serious cases of embezzlement. In 1919 Borodin

was sent with Tsarist

jewels sewn in the lining of two leather suitcases to deliver to nists in the

United

States.

some

Commu-

Probably fearing that he was under surveil-

lance during the journey, he entrusted the suitcases to an Austrian

whom

he met on board

ship.

Though

the Austrian promised to deliver

the bags to Chicago, they never arrived. For a time Borodin himself

came under

suspicion of jewel theft. 19

During the Comintern's action went tionaries

little

first

two years

its

program of covert

beyond instructing and financing non-Russian revolu-

and Bolshevik sympathizers. In March 1921

in

Germany

it

made its first attempt to launch a revolution. The main initiative for the German "March Action" came from Bela Kun, then the most celebrated non-Russian Communist, a veteran of the October Revolution as well as the former leader of the

member

Hungarian Soviet Republic, and a

"The bourgeois governments," Kun believed, "were still weak. Now was the time to hit them, again and again, with a chain of uprisings, strikes and insurrections." Germany, the birthplace of Marxism, was also, he argued, capitalism's most vulnerable point. Lenin was less enthusiastic. His own faith in imminent world revolution was on the wane. After the devastation of the Civil War, he believed that Soviet Russia needed a period of internal of the Comintern's Little Bureau.

Kun

recuperation and detente abroad with her imperialist foes. But

seems to have won Lenin over by arguing that a successful insurrection in

in

Germany would reduce international pressure on the Soviet regime. Early in March Kun and a secret Comintern delegation arrived Berlin to plan the German revolution. Comrade Thomas, the existing

Comintern representative lently,"

in

Germany, was

appalled. "I protested vio-

he later claimed, "and demanded that

Kun

be recalled.

I

sent

them proof that the preconditions for any uprising simply did not exist in Germany. Moscow remained silent." By March 17, however, Kun had won over the KPD leadership. "The workers," it instructed, "are herewith called into battle." Representatives from the French, British,

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

Czech, and other Communist parties were

German

learn from the forthcoming

On March 24th the

KPD

summoned

71

to witness

and

revolution.

21 and 22 strikes and insurrections began.

On

the

ordered a general strike and urged the workers to seize

arms.

The no part

crushed, and the five

German

great majority of the

in the struggle.

By April

labor force, however, took

the few insurgent areas had been

1

KPD called off the general strike.

workers had been

killed,

One hundred fortyan unknown number wounded and 3,470

arrested.

Levi,

Comintern by the tee

who had

German workers

and

its role,

KPD leader in February, blamed the

resigned as

for forcing the

KPD

into attempting a revolution

themselves:

the existence of the

"Thanks

German Communist

Europe's only Communist-led mass party, Brandler, Levi's successor as either the

ECCI

KPD

is

leader,

"or persons close to

bringing about the

to the Executive

"March Action"

it"

in

opposed

Commit-

Party, hitherto

grave danger." Heinrich

denounced the claim that had anything

to

do with

as "the slyest, dirtiest piece of

Comintern president, Zinoviev, was "an infamous lie." But in 1926 the "lie" was officially confirmed. It was finally admitted in Bela Kun's official biography that "In 1921 the Communists sent him on a mission to Germany, where he directed

slander." This allegation, repeated the

the

March Action undertaken by

Though

neither Lenin nor the

accept responsibility for the

the proletariat."

20

Comintern could bring themselves to

March

action,

shed in Soviet policy. The priority

its

now was

failure

marked a water-

not the spread of the

Revolution but the consolidation of the Soviet regime at home. At the

Tenth Party Congress

in

March

1921,

when announcing

"to put an end to opposition, to put the lid on

one-party

Communist

state

it,"

his intention

and

establish a

purged of the remnants of the Mensheviks

and SRs, Lenin admitted: "We have failed to convince the broad masses." Large areas of the Russian countryside were swept by famine, industry was close to collapse, and peasant uprisings continued in the Ukraine and Central Asia.

While the Party Congress was in session, the sailors of the Kronstadt garrison, formerly described by Trotsky as "the beauty and pride" of the Revolution, rebelled against the political repression and economic hardship imposed by the Bolshevik regime. The manifesto of the Kronstadt rebels, "What We Are Fighting For," singled out as one

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

72

of its main targets the Cheka, which

it

likened to the Oprichniki of Ivan

"The power of the police-gendarme monarchy passed into the hands of the Communist usurpers who, instead of bringing freedom to the workers, instilled in them the constant fear of falling into the the Terrible:

torture-chambers of the Cheka, which in their horrors far exceeded the police rule of the Tsarist regime."

spiracy theory predictably

made

21

it

The Cheka's

predilection for con-

quick to detect the long

Western imperialism behind the Kronstadt

rising.

arm of

Dzerzhinsky

re-

ported to Lenin that the rebellion was part of a plot orchestrated by

French agents

in Riga,

working

in collusion

with the SRs, "to carry out

a coup in Petrograd, with the support of the sailors and the discontented working masses,

upon which France intends

into the Baltic." Lenin noted his agreement.

22

to send her fleet

On March

17, just as

the

KPD

was preparing for the "March action" in Germany, the Kronstadt rebellion was brutally suppressed by fifty thousand Red Army troops, including Cheka detachments. Kronstadt hastened, though it did not cause, a major shift in Bolshevik policy. At the Tenth Party Congress Lenin announced the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP). Food requisitioning was stopped, private trading and small-scale private enterprise were restored, and attempts were made to persuade foreign businessmen to provide Russia with their skills and capital. The major priorities of Soviet diplomacy henceforth were to negotiate trade agreements and secure diplomatic recognition from the capitalist world. The beginning of this process was the arrival of a Soviet trade mission in London in May 1920, headed by the commissar for foreign trade, Leonid Krasin,

who began

protracted negotiations for an Anglo-Soviet trade treaty. 23

Krasin's principal assistant and translator was a

Klyshko. The Special Branch reported in

that,

Cheka

officer,

N. K.

immediately on his arrival

England, Klyshko made contact with "Communist elements." 24

A

further sign of the growing priority of foreign intelligence collection

was Dzerzhinsky's decision

to

found a Foreign Department (Inostran-

known as INO) on the Cheka's third anniversary, December 20, 1920. 25 INO's main diplomatic target was Great Britain, regarded by nyi Otdel, better

Soviet leaders as

still

the greatest of the world powers and the key to

Bolshevik Russia's acceptance by the capitalist world. Within

little

more than a year of the signature of the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement in March 1921, Russia negotiated similar accords with Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. At the time of the

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

signature of the Anglo-Soviet agreement, the infant reliable intelligence

on British foreign

INO

still

policy. In a report to

73

had

little

Lenin the

Cheka correctly identified the most influential supporter of the agreement as the prime minister himself, David Lloyd George. The main opposition, it reported, came from "the Conservative Party of Curzon and Churchill, which circles."

based on the Foreign Office and

is

its

surrounding

26

It

did not, however, require secret intelligence to identify Lord

Curzon, the foreign secretary, and Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, as the net.

When

two most committed anti-Bolsheviks within the

Krasin met the cabinet

Downing

at 10

ning of Anglo-Soviet trade negotiations in

away

May

cabi-

Street at the begin-

1920, Churchill stayed

rather than "shake hands with the hairy baboon."

Curzon

reluc-

when Krasin held out his hand, at Only when the prime minister exclaimed,

tantly attended the reception, but first

declined to accept

it.

"Curzon! Be a gentleman!" did the foreign secretary take Krasin's still-outstretched hand.

27

Apart from identifying Curzon and Churchill

as leading British opposition to the trade treaty, the

Cheka showed only

a crude grasp either of British politics or of the influences on British

March 1921. Churchill was still a coalition Cheka alleged, a Conservative; he crossed the

foreign policy in

Liberal and

not, as the

floor of the

House of Commons only in 1924. The Cheka's main, perhaps to Russia, cited several times in

Ransome, 28

later

only, secret source

its

report,

famous as a children's

on British policy

was the journalist Arthur

novelist, best

known

as the

author of the Swallows and Amazons adventure stories of boating in the

Lake

perpetual

News

Ransome was both a distinguished man of letters and a schoolboy. As wartime correspondent of the (London) Daily

District.

in revolutionary

shrewdness and naivete.

mad

Russia he had displayed a curious blend of

He became

captivated by the "dear good wild

practical impractical credulous suspicious purblind clear-sighted

infernally energetic Bolsheviks," their revolutionary vision of a

Every

man

is

in

some

and

new

full

society:

sort, until his

harden, the potential builder of a

even

if this

blood

is

it is still

thing that

is

of a confused admiration for

youth dies and

New

Jerusalem.

.

his eyes .

.

And

being builded here with tears and

not the golden city that

we

ourselves have dreamed,

a thing to the sympathetic understanding of which

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

74

each one of us youth.

Ransome tually

is

bound by whatever he owes

know many

got to

proceedings with his English

and

own

of the Bolshevik leaders personally, even-

marrying Trotsky's secretary

his

to his

29

after long

first wife.

and embittered divorce

He admired

both Dzerzhinsky

deputy Peters:

[Dzerzhinsky]

is

a calm, cool-headed fanatic for the revolu-

tion with absolute trust in his

ing no higher court.

was remarkable

He

own

has been

conscience and recogniz-

much

where he upon himself

in prison

for his urgent desire to take

unpleasant labour for other criminals such as cleaning

and emptying

slops.

cells

He has a theory of self-sacrifice in which

man has to take on himself the unpleasantness that would otherwise be shared by many. Hence his unwillingness

one

to

occupy

his present position.

Even when confronted by evidence of Cheka sought to justify

its

atrocities,

Ransome

still

existence as the only alternative to chaos. In 1921

he even contrived to defend the suppression of the Kronstadt rebel30

Both the Cheka and SIS were much interested Though some SIS officers regarded him as a Bolshevik lion.

were anxious to exploit

his

in

Ransome.

agent, others

remarkable range of contacts with the

Russian leadership. Tentative SIS approaches to Ransome, however,

came

to nothing.

Ransome's biographer concludes that Ransome and Ransome had

SIS both tried and failed "to exploit the other." 31 If

mentioned

his dealings with

SIS

—and

he was generally anxious to

impress the Bolshevik leadership with his influential British contacts

he would certainly have raised the Cheka's estimate of his importance.

The Cheka may also have known of Ransome's postwar meetings with Sir Basil Thomson, head of both the Special Branch and the postwar Directorate of Intelligence responsible for monitoring

civil

subversion. 32

Ransome moved from Moscow to Riga in Latvia but several years to make regular trips to Russia as corre-

In 1919

continued for

spondent for the Manchester Guardian. His brief and fragmentary diary records meetings during these visits with such senior

Cheka

fig-

ures as Dzerzhinsky's deputies, Peters and Unshlikht. 33 Ransome's

other Cheka contacts included N. K. Klyshko, the Cheka represents-

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

tive

75

with the Soviet delegation that negotiated the Anglo-Soviet trade

agreement. 34

The Cheka (who Paul Dukes as

inaccurately singled out The Times journalist Har-

1922 became foreign editor) and the SIS

old Williams

in

Sir

the

officer

main influences on Curzon's and Churchill's

35 opposition to the Anglo-Soviet trade treaty. This error reflected in

part the Cheka's tendency, in

common

with some other foreign observ-

The Times and the secret service within the Whitehall corridors of power. But the malign influence attributed to Williams and Dukes also probably derived, in part, from Ransome's comments on them. Ransome had quarreled violently ers, to overestimate the influence of both

with Williams, once a close friend, over Williams's hostility to the Bolsheviks. 36

And

he had a similar contempt for Dukes's clandestine

"much the same sort 37 of view of Russia as a hunted fox gets of a fox-hunt." The Cheka also inaccurately described Williams as a baronet. He was, it added, "married to a certain Tyrkova, who is thought to be the daughter of the missions for SIS, which, he maintained, gave him

famous statesman of a conservative-Cadet [Constitutional Democratic Party] tendency."

On

this point

report. Williams's wife, he

Lenin himself corrected the Cheka

wrote to Dzerzhinsky, was not Tyrkova but

Tyrtova ("My wife knew her well personally in

her

own

right,

in

her youth") and was,

"a very prominent Cadet." 38

Ransome's tendency to overstate his own influence and conwas probably responsible for leading the Cheka to

tacts in Whitehall

the inaccurate conclusion that his

visit to

Russia early in 1921 was part

of a special mission entrusted by Lloyd George to himself and a busi-

nessman named Leith to further the cause of a trade agreement. Ransome told the Cheka that "the Soviet Union has a greater influence on the East [than Britain] and that the

Russian influence than

it is

Muslim world is more inclined to The Cheka wrongly concluded

to English."

which England is any serious obstacles" was one of the motives inclining

that "the spread of Soviet influence to the East, to

unable to

England

set

to sign a trade treaty.

Ransome

also told the

reports in the English press of the Kronstadt rebellion to the Bolsheviks in Petrograd

Cheka

that

and opposition

and Moscow were evidence of "orga-

nized pressure on English public opinion" designed to wreck the trade treaty.

The Cheka

reported:

"Ransome

considers that the time might

be opportune for the Soviet Government to publish the true state of affairs."

39

Lenin wrote to Dzerzhinsky after reading the Cheka report: "In

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

76

my

opinion

it is

very important and, probably, fundamentally true." 40

Lenin and the Cheka attached so informed views on British

much importance

Ransome's illpolicy partly because he told them what they to

expected to hear and tended to confirm their existing conspiracy theories.

Ransome had few, commitment

passionate

if

any, British secrets to betray, but he had a

to helping the Bolsheviks gain diplomatic rec-

ognition in the West. After the conclusion of the

fulness to

March

first

step in that

Ransome's usethe Cheka increased. He became the friend and, on occasion,

process, the Anglo-Soviet trade treaty of

1921,

the confidant of the head of the British trade mission, Robert Hodgson,

who must

unaware of his contacts with the Cheka. In May 1923 the trade treaty was threatened by the so-called "Curzon ultimatum," accusing the Soviet government of subversion and hostile propaganda in India and among India's neighbors. Ransome, by his own account, spent many hours discussing the ultimatum with Chicherin, his deputy Litvinov, and, though his memoirs do not mention it, probably the GPU as well. He argued that while Curzon remained implacably hostile to Soviet Russia, the British government as a whole did not want to break off relations. "I have," wrote Ransome, "seldom drunk so much tea in the Kremlin in so short a time." 41 certainly have been

His diary records four meetings with Litvinov, three with Chicherin,

two with Hodgson, and one each with Bukharin and Zinoviev,

all in

the space of four days. 42

Hodgson had

instructions not to discuss the

Curzon ultimatum

with the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs but was persuaded by Ran-

an "accidental" meeting with Litvinov in woods Moscow. 43 Eight months later Ransome at last achieved his ambition of seeing the Soviet Union break out of its diplomatic isolation. He was present at the ceremony in Moscow in January 1924 when, following the election of Britain's first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald, Hodgson presented an official note to Chicherin for-

some

to agree to

outside

mally recognizing the Soviet regime as the de jure government of

Ransome, "a very happy day for me. 'My war,' more than five years after the Armistice of 1918,

Russia. "It was," wrote

which had

lasted for

During the early 1920s

British intelligence

clearly superior to the Cheka's

on

on Soviet foreign policy was

Britain. Soviet Russia did not yet

possess the sigint that had provided the Tsarist foreign ministry with its

most important diplomatic

intelligence.

During

their first

decade

in

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

77

power the Bolsheviks suffered from two serious sigint handicaps. The first was their fear of relying on the relatively sophisticated codes and ciphers that they had inherited from the Tsarist regime, and their introduction of less secure systems based at first on simple forms of letter transposition. The second was the dispersion of the Tsarist code breakers, who had given prerevolutionary Russia the world lead in cryptanalysis. Worse still, from the Bolshevik point of view, some of the best

had

fled

abroad. 45

The head of the Russian section at Britain's interwar sigint Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS, the

agency, the

ancestor of today's

GCHQ),

from the Tsarist cabinet

noir,

Ernst ("Fetty") Fetterlein, was a refugee

who had

escaped with his wife to Britain

by hiding aboard a Swedish ship, which was unsuccessfully searched before

it

left

Russia. Fetterlein claimed to have been the leading cryp-

tanalyst of Tsarist Russia, with the rank of admiral. His colleagues in

GC & CS found that vital

"on book ciphers and anything where insight was

he was quite the best." 46 The great American cryptographer, Wil-

liam Friedman,

who met

Fetty soon after the end of the war, was struck

by the large ruby ring on the index finger of his right hand:

showed

interest in this

unusual gem, he told

me

that the ring

"When

I

had been

presented to him as a token of recognition and thanks for his cryptanalytic successes while in the service of

Czar Nicholas, the

last

of

the line." Ironically, those successes

lomatic

traffic.

47

had included decrypting

Revolution was to help decrypt Russian diplomatic ish.

British dip-

His main achievement during the decade after the

Though he spoke English with

traffic for

the Brit-

a thick Russian accent, Fetterlein

was a fine linguist. Much of his English, however, had been learned from Sexton Blake and other popular detective novels; he sometimes amused his colleagues in GC & CS with remarks such as "Who has boned my pencil?" or "He was a rotter!" Fetterlein said little about prerevolutionary Russia. Occasionally a fellow cryptanalyst would

draw him out by making

known

to disagree.

very strong

man

"And

a disingenuous

comment with which he was

the Tsar, Mr. Fetterlein,

I

believe he

was a

with good physique?" Fetty usually rose to the bait

and replied indignantly: "The Tsar was a weakling who had no mind of his own, sickly and generally the subject of scorn." 48 Thanks to Fetterlein and his British colleagues, GC & CS was able to decrypt

most high-grade Russian diplomatic

negotiation of the Anglo-Soviet accord.

The

traffic

during the

Soviet intercepts

made

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

78

dramatic reading. Lenin advised Krasin at the outset of negotiations in

June 1920: "That swine Lloyd George has no scruples or shame in the way he deceives. Don't believe a word he says and gull him three times

much." Lloyd George took such insults philosophically. Some of his Curzon and Churchill used the evidence in the intercepts of subsidies to the Daily Herald and British Bolsheviks, and of other forms of Soviet subversion in Britain and India, to demand that the trade delegation be expelled and the trade negotiations abandoned. as

ministers did not.

Though determined not agreement, Lloyd George

felt it

to sacrifice the prospect of a trade

prudent to respond to the outrage with

which most of his ministers reacted Soviet intercepts.

of the

On September

Moscow Communist

August

to the evidence of subversion in the

10 the prime minister accused the head

Party,

Lev Kamenev, who had arrived

to lead the trade delegation with

in

Krasin as his deputy, of "gross

breach of faith" and various forms of subversion. Though Krasin was allowed to remain, Kamenev,

who was due

to return to Russia for

consultation the next day, was told that he would not be permitted to

come

Lloyd George claimed "irrefutable evidence" for

back.

charges but declined to say what

it

was.

The

his

Soviet delegation should,

however, have realized that their telegrams had been decrypted. In August the cabinet had agreed to release a selection of the Soviet intercepts. Eight intercepted messages concerning Soviet subsidies to the Daily

the Herald

itself.

Herald were given

to all national

newspapers except

In order to mislead the Russians into believing that

the messages had leaked from the entourage of

Maxim

Litvinov in

Copenhagen, the press was asked to say that they had been obtained from "a neutral country." The Times, however, failed to play the game. To Lloyd George's fury, The Times began its story with the words:

"The following wireless messages have been intercepted by the British government." Klyshko, the Cheka resident (station chief) with the trade delegation, however, was clearly a novice in sigint. Either he

The Times attentively or he wrongly assumed that, save "Marta" cipher used to transmit the eight published messages, Soviet ciphers were still secure. Nor did he grasp the significance of leaks to the Daily Mail and Morning Post in September based on further failed to read

for the

Soviet intercepts.

The

cipher systems was

extent of British penetration of Soviet code and

realized not by the trade delegation but by Mikhail Frunze, commander-in-chief of the Southern Red Army first

Group, which defeated the forces of the White general, Baron Wrangel, in the Crimea. Frunze reported to Moscow on December 19, 1920:

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

It

me

emerges from a report furnished to

79

Yam-

today by

chenko, former head of the Wrangel radio station at Sevastopol, that absolutely all

the

enemy

in

conclusion all this

is

our ciphers are being deciphered by

consequence of their simplicity. that

all

time been entirely in the

A week later the trade delegation in much

of

its

.

.

The

know about our

military-operational and diplomatic work.

as

.

overall

our enemies, particularly England, have internal,

49

London was

instructed to conduct

correspondence as possible by courier "until the estab-

lishment of new cipher systems." These

and

early in 1921, defeated Fetterlein

new

when introduced

systems,

his British colleagues for several

GC & CS had begun once again amounts of Soviet diplomatic traffic. The celebrated "Curzon ultimatum" of May 1923 denouncing Soviet subvermonths. By the end of April, however, to decrypt substantial

sion, not only

edly

merely quoted a series of Soviet intercepts, but repeat-

—and undiplomatically —taunted the Russians with the successful

interception of their communications:

The Russian Commissariat

for Foreign Affairs will

no doubt

recognize the following communication dated 21st February, 1923,

which they received from M. Raskolnikov.

Commissariat for Foreign Affairs nize a

.

.

The

.

will also doubtless recog-

communication received by them from Kabul, dated November, 1922. Nor will they have forgotten

the 8th

.

.

.

a communication, dated the 16th March, 1923, from

Karakhan, the Assistant Commissary for Foreign

M.

Affairs, to

M. Raskolnikov. In the

summer

of 1923

Moscow

again introduced

new code and

cipher

systems, which for a time defeated Fetterlein and his colleagues. But,

probably by the end of 1924, ing significant

GC & CS succeeded once again in decrypt-

amounts of Soviet diplomatic

Though

Soviet sigint

still

traffic.

50

lagged behind Britain's at the time of

Curzon ultimatum, the INO (foreign intelligence department) network abroad was already larger, more ambitious, and more aggressive than that of SIS, whose budget had been drastically cut back after the end of the First World War. The spread of Soviet trade missions and

the

embassies after the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement of

INO

March

1921 gave

the opportunity to establish a network of "legal residencies"

80

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

headed by "residents"

(station chiefs) operating

within Soviet missions. 51

As

under diplomatic cover

in Britain, the issue of

diplomatic cover

gave

rise to recurrent friction

between diplomats and intelligence

offi-

cers.

SIS station commanders abroad between the wars tended to

live

an underprivileged existence as "passport control fringes of British embassies,

officers"

on the

where they were commonly regarded as an

embarrassment rather than an

asset

by ambassadors, who preferred to

INO residents were commanders, and their intermittent clashes with Soviet ambassadors were correspondingly greater. According to Georgi Agabekov, an OGPU resident who dekeep intelligence

far

arm's length from diplomacy. 52

at

more powerful

figures than SIS station

fected in 1930:

Theoretically the

OGPU

whom

bassador, of

something of the

he

sort.

resident

is

is officially

subordinate to the am-

the second secretary or

But, in fact ... his authority often

exceeds that of the ambassador. Greatly feared by his colleagues, even

by the ambassador, he holds over their heads

the perpetual fear of denunciation. Sometimes the ambassa-

dor

.

.

.

lodges a complaint against the resident in his capacity

secretary. Then you'll see an embassy divided two camps, resident and ambassador each with his own partisans, till Moscow recalls one or the other and his parti-

embassy

as

into

sans will soon follow. 53

The head of the INO, sors, responsible for

until late in 1929

who had become

the foreign section of the

police spies

secretary, Boris

OGPU,

its

succes-

was Mikhail Abramovich

Trilisser, a

Russian Jew

a professional revolutionary in 1901 at the age of only

eighteen. Before the First

down

Cheka and

running the residencies abroad, from August 1921

among

World War he had

the Bolshevik emigres.

Bazhanov, who defected

in

specialized in tracking

Even

Stalin's

one-time

1928 hotly pursued by the

described Trilisser as "a clever and intelligent Chekist." 54 Like

most other senior INO officers of his generation, Trilisser was liquidated during the Terror of the late thirties, only to be posthumously rehabilitated after Stalin's death. His portrait hangs today in a place of

honor

in the

torate of the

For Trilisser

Memory Room KGB.

of INO's successor, the First Chief Direc-

55

his first two years as head of the INO Foreign Section, seems to have delegated most of the day-to-day management

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

81

of the section to his Estonian assistant, Vladimir Andreevich Styrne. Besides being notable for his youth (he was only twenty-two

when he him a

joined the Foreign Section in 1921), Styrne also brought with

blood-curdling reputation for ruthlessness. ble to corroborate, he

own

Though

the story

was believed within the Cheka

to

is

impossi-

have had his

parents liquidated. 56

At about the time when Trilisser took over the INO in 1921, the Comintern set up a secret international liaison department, the OMS (Otdel Mezhdunarodnykh Svyazey), to run its clandestine network of 57 agents abroad. The OMS performed a valuable service for INO by drawing into secret-service work foreign Communists and fellow travelers (Communist sympathizers) who were more likely to respond to an appeal for help from the Communist International than to a direct approach from Soviet intelligence. Many of the best OGPU and NKVD foreign agents in the 1930s believed initially that they were working for the Comintern. 58

OMS

also pioneered the

development of the "front organiza-

become an important instrument of Soviet "active measures" (influence operations). The greatest virtuoso of the front organizations set up with OMS funds was the German Communist deputy Willi Munzenberg, affectionately described by his "life tions" that were later to

partner," Babette Gross, as "the patron saint of the fellow-travellers." 59

During the Russian famine of 1921 Munzenberg Workers' Aid (IWA) with headquarters lished himself as the Comintern's

most

up International and quickly estabpropagandist. Accordset

in Berlin,

effective

ing to Babette Gross:

His magic word was solidarity

—

at the

beginning solidarity

with the starving Russians, then with the proletariat of the

whole world. By substituting

solidarity for charity

berg found the key to the heart of reacted spontaneously.

.

.

.

When

many

Munzen-

intellectuals; they

he spoke of the "sacred

enthusiasm for the proletarian duty to help and assist" he

touched on that almost exalted readiness for

found wherever there

is faith.

sacrifice that is

60

Each act of 'solidarity with the Russian people' forged an emotional bond between the donor and the idealized version of the Soviet workerpeasant state presented by Comintern propaganda.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

82

IWA

became known in Party slang as the "Miinzenberg Trust." According to Arthur Koestler, who was sent to work for him in 1933, Miinzenberg had acquired "a greater measure of independence and freedom of action in the international field than any other Comin-

The

tern leader.

.

.

.

Undisturbed by the

stifling

control of the party bureauc-

racy," his imaginative propaganda campaigns were "in striking contrast to the pedantic, sectarian

language of the

The Miinzenberg Trust quickly gained

official

Party Press." 61

the support of a galaxy of "un-

committed" writers, academics, and scientists. The portrait of a largeeyed hungry child stretching out a hand for food in Kathe Kollwitz's poster,

produced for Miinzenberg

in 1923,

became one of the most

powerful and best-remembered images of the century. In the course of the 1920s, the Miinzenberg Trust established lishing houses,

away

book

clubs, films,

and

its

own

newspapers, pub-

theatrical productions.

As

far

as Japan, according to Koestler, the Trust controlled directly or

indirectly nineteen

newspapers and magazines. Remarkably, Miinzen-

berg even managed to

The

IWA

make most

of his ventures pay. 62

was the progenitor of a

series of

what Miinzenberg

privately called "Innocents' Clubs," 63 founded to "organize the intellec-

tuals" under covert

voguish causes.

Comintern leadership

He had

geois intellectuals

whom

a friendly

in

support of a variety of

contempt for the "innocent" bour-

he seduced by the lure of spiritual solidarity

Though

his main preoccupation was propaganda, Miinzenberg also used the "Innocents' Clubs" as a cover for OMS

with the proletariat.

intelligence networks,

which included some of the

intellectuals

he had

seduced. 64

At

the operational level there was, inevitably, recurrent friction

between the overlapping networks of OMS and the more powerful INO. At the Center, however, the friction between the two secret agencies was lessened by the personal friendship between Mikhail Trilisser, the

OMS

head of INO, and Iosif Aronovich Pyatnitsky, head of from its foundation in 1921 until he was purged in the mid-thirties. Like Trilisser, Pyatnitsky was Jewish and had begun a career as a professional revolutionary in his late teens. Before the First specialized in smuggling both revolutionaries

World War he had

and revolutionary propaganda in and out of Tsarist Russia. 65 INO was usually the dominant partner in the relationship with OMS. While Trilisser had a seat on OMS, Pyatnitsky had no position in INO. 66 The most ambitious covert action involving both OGPU and Comintern was the final attempt to launch a revolution in Germany.

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

Though approved by

the Politburo, the initiative on this occasion

83

came

from the Comintern. In March 1923 Lenin suffered a third stroke, which ended his active political life. The Comintern's leaders were determined to spread the revolution to

Communism triumphed

at least

one other country before

Germany, they were convinced 67 On August 15 Zinoviev interthat it would sweep across Europe. rupted his summer holiday to instruct the German Communist Party (KPD) to prepare for the coming revolution. 68 On August 23 the Politburo held a secret meeting to hear a report from the Comintern German specialist, Karl Radek. "Here at last, Comrades," said Trotsky, "is the his death. If

we had been

tempest

in

expecting impatiently for so

destined to change the face of the earth.

.

.

.

many

The German

years. It

is

revolution

means the collapse of world capitalism."

Though

less

euphoric than Trotsky, the Politburo decided to

send a secret four-man mission on false papers to Berlin to prepare for the

German

tions of the direct

its

OGPU

revolution.

Radek was

Comintern (decided

to transmit to the

for

it

KPD the instruc-

by the Soviet Politburo) and

Central Committee accordingly. Unshlikht, Dzerzhinsky's

arm the "Red Hundreds" who would carry out the revolution and to set up a German OGPU afterward to stamp out counterrevolution. Vasya Schmidt, the Soviet commissar for labor, who was of German origin, was to organize revolutionary cells within the unions, which in the aftermath of revolution would become German Soviets. Yuri Pyatakov, a member of the Russian Communist Party's Central Committee, was to coordinate the work of the others and be responsible for liaison between Moscow and Berlin.

deputy, was to organize and

69

There was

in reality

revolution in 1923.

The

German support among

never any serious prospect of a

KPD had only a fraction of the

German working class enjoyed by its socialist rival, the SPD, and the German government was far less feeble than Kerensky's provisional the

government

in

October 1917. The Soviet secret mission, however,

re-

mained determinedly optimistic. Pyatakov's reports to Moscow, though contemptuous of the KPD leadership, insisted that the German proletariat was ready for revolution. A special meeting of the Politburo late in September gave the go-ahead. Its conclusions were considered so secret that

its

minutes, instead of being circulated to the Party's

Central Committee, as was usual at this period, were locked in the safe of the Politburo secretary.

According to the plan approved by the Politburo, following

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

84

demonstrations to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolu-

Red Hundreds would begin armed conflicts with the The resulting mayhem, and the official repression it was cal-

tion, Unshlikht's

police.

culated to provoke, were expected to lead to a general working-class insurrection, in the course of seize the

which Unshlikht's detachments would

key centers of power, as the Red Guards had done in Petro-

Arms

grad six years before. 70

for the

Red Hundreds were smuggled by

cargo steamer from Petrograd to Hamburg, where they were unloaded

by Communist dockers. 71

The German October

revolution

23. Iosif Pyatnitsky, the

Communist

was due

and Otto Kuusinen, the Com-

Party's Central Committee,

intern's Finnish secretary-general, sat

smoking and drinking

to begin in the early hours of

head of OMS, Dmitri Manuilsky of the

up

all

night in Kuusinen's study,

from them the revolution had begun. Throughout the night a direct telephone line was kept open to Lenin's sickbed at Gorky,

Radek

coffee while they waited for a telegram

in Berlin to tell

where other Soviet leaders were assembled. Lenin himself could mumble only a few syllables, though his mind remained alert for news of the revolution he had predicted five years before.

The news, however, never

came. At dawn on October 23 a telegram was sent to ask Radek what had

happened.

A

few hours

later

came

his

one-word

reply:

"Nothing." At

Radek and the KPD leadership had called off the planned Though a rising went ahead in Hamburg, it was quickly crushed. Bitter recriminations followed. 72 The KPD was heavily criticized in Moscow for having thrown away a "favorable opportunity." 73 The blame more properly the last minute

insurrection because of lack of working-class support.

belonged to

Moscow

for having persuaded

evidence, that the opportunity

had ever

itself,

existed.

in defiance of the

74

Thenceforth the Comintern's main hopes for the spread of revolution

moved from Europe Europe the

to Asia, especially to India

failure of the 1923

and

to China.

Within

"German October" confirmed the shift German "March Ac-

of emphasis that had followed the failure of the

away from sponsoring revolutionary insurrections to and diplomatic relations with the capitalist powers. For some years the Cheka and its successors had greater success against Western diplomatic targets in Moscow than in Western capitals. The trade missions and embassies established in Moscow from 1921 onward tion" in 1921

establishing trade

proved

far easier to penetrate

than the major foreign ministries abroad.

Surveillance of foreign missions

was the

responsibility of the Cheka's

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

85

KRO,

headed for most of the 1920s by Artur Khristyanovich Artuzov. Born in 1891, Artuzov was the son of an Italian-Swiss cheese maker, who had settled in Russia, and the counterintelligence department, the

nephew of M. Labour. 75

He

until 1934.

Kedrov, head of the

S.

later

NKVD

Department of Forced INO from late 1929

succeeded Trilisser as head of

His portrait hangs today

in the

Memory Room

of the First

Chief Directorate, together with a eulogy of his work as head of both

KRO

and INO. 76

The

FCD

classified history of the

He

an ideas man.

praises

Artuzov

chiefly as

pioneered a variety of penetration techniques

"honey trap" to less subtle methods of intimidation later employed by the KGB. Foreign diplomatic couriers were followed from the moment, and sometimes even before, they crossed the Soviet border in the hope of gaining access to against foreign missions, ranging from the

the contents of their diplomatic bags.

When

couriers traveled, as they

Moscow, was added to the train, fitted out as a photographic laboratory, in the hope of gaining access to their diplomatic bags while the couriers were asleep. 77 One courier employed by the Finnish trade delegation in Moscow during 1921 had to resist seduction on the night sleeper by an attractive Cheka female agent anxious to sepa78 Shortly afterward another Finnish courier rate him from his bag. was put to sleep with the help of drugged tea from a train samovar and the contents of his bag photographed in the laboratory carriage the first recorded case of the use of drugs by Soviet intelligence frequently did, on the night sleeper between Petrograd and a special carriage

against a diplomatic target. 79

Unlike INO during the 1920s, KRO had its own laboratory, which ran training courses on the art of opening diplomatic bags, forging official seals, making secret inks and using drugs. 80 Probably the most striking of the KRO's early successes against foreign diplomats was with the Estonian Roman Birk, who fell heavily into debt while playing cards in

Moscow

with a Cheka agent. Birk not only

made

was himself recruited the "Trust" deception, the most

available the contents of his diplomatic bag but

by the Cheka,

later taking part in

successful Soviet intelligence operation of the 1920s. 81

In 1922 the

KRO seems to have devised an even more sinister

plan to deal with Robert Hodgson, the head of the British Trade Delegation.

A

former Tsarist

official

claimed, probably reliably, that

the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs had offered to spy

on the

British mission.

Hodgson reported

him a job

if

he agreed

to the Foreign Office:

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

86

Roller [head of the British section of the that he should entice

drugged and

me

KRO]

proposed

to his house, that I should there be

my pockets searched; it was thought that by this

means valuable information could be secured.

My

acquain-

tance urged the obvious objections to this genial suggestion;

motor car would be standing outside the house, my prolonged absence would be made from the Mission and complications must ensue which could

the Mission

inquiries as to

hardly be agreeable to the Soviet government.

Artuzov agreed and the plan was dropped. 82

The commonest

Moscow were

KRO

operations against foreign missions in

the intimidation of their Russian employees and other

contacts. In

May

eign affairs,

who he

1924 Hodgson sent Litvinov, the commissar for forcorrectly believed disapproved of at least

some

OGPU excesses, two "perfectly friendly" letters giving examples of the harassment of his mission over the previous two years. Several of the cases concerned an

OGPU

officer

using the

name Anatoli Vladimiro-

vich Jurgens, who, said Hodgson, "appears to have specialized in terrorizing

women and young girls."

of the maids at the trade mission to jail her for

life

Early in 1922 Jurgens

summoned one

named Theresa Koch and threatened

unless she signed a

document agreeing

to spy

on the

mission and report to the Cheka once a week:

,

Finally, being completely terrorized, she signed.

She was

threatened with condign punishment should she reveal the

For months afterwards she did not dare when she wished to leave the country, permission was systematically refused, the reason being that she had been connected with some incident at Ekaterinoslav where she has never been in her life. incident to me.

.

.

.

to leave the Mission premises. Later,

—

Early in 1923 Jurgens tried similar pressure on an old

woman named

Maria Nikolayevna Schmegman, who had become acquainted with

Hodgson through

selling antique furniture to

him. Jurgens told her that

she would never leave the Lubyanka alive unless she signed an agree-

ment

to steal

documents from Hodgson and spy on

his embassy.

Finally, she signed the undertaking. For a considerable time afterwards she was persecuted by Jurgens. She was also

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

threatened with the severest punishment

if

87

she spoke of the

matter to anyone. Early in 1924 the girlfriend of a trade-mission employee, Tatiana

Romanovna

Levitskaya, was also asked to spy on the mission.

When

Narim

region

she refused, she was sentenced to three years' exile in the as a British spy.

83

"In comparison with other missions," Hodgson told the Foreign Office, the British mission

was "treated with

relative decency."

After protests by the Polish legation at harassment by the

OGPU,

it

received a formal apology from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.

84

Unlike the Poles, Hodgson received no formal apology. But he reported in

as

August 1924 it

OGPU intimidation had ceased (only temporarily,

that

turned out) since his protest in May: "M. Chicherin has

later

obviously taken the matter

much

to heart,

and

is

extremely anxious

that repetition of such obnoxious episodes should be avoided in the

future."

85 *

The Cheka and

its successors frequently found it easier European diplomatic missions outside Europe than

penetrate

Europe

itself.

to in

In the early 1920s the mistress of the British consul at

Cheka officer named Apresov with the conOn moving to become OGPU resident at Meshed

Resht, Persia, supplied a sul's secret papers.

in 1923,

Apresov also obtained from the British consulate copies of

the consul's reports to the British embassy in Teheran as well as cor-

respondence between the military attache

command

in India.

in

Teheran and the high

86

The non-European capital in which European missions were most vulnerable to Soviet penetration in the pre-Stalin era was probably Beijing (Peking).

A

police raid

April 1927 recovered copies of a

on the Soviet Embassy

number of highly

in Beijing in

secret British diplo-

matic documents. They included, according to a Foreign Office minute,

"probably the two most important despatches" written by the British

ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson, over the previous few months. Lampson himself claimed that "leakage" from the Italian and Japanese legations

had been even more

serious:

Documents obtained from of decyphers of

all

Italian [Legation] consist

mainly

important telegrams between Peking and

Rome and vice versa, and those from Japanese [Legation] are comprehensive and even include such details as seating ar-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

88

rangements

and record of conversations

at official dinners

held between

of Legation and visitors thereto.

officials

Lampson reported that both the head chancery servant and another member of the Chinese staff at the British legation had been discovered to be

working for the Russians. 87 The Foreign Office

lessons of the legation leaks.

failed to learn the

Throughout the interwar years

it

possessed

not merely no security department but not a single security

officer.

Security at British missions continued to be inadequate, sometimes

outrageously

so.

Leaks of documents from the

Rome

embassy, involv-

ing at least one local employee, began in 1924 and continued until the

Second World War. 88

Though most Soviet espionage against foreign missions in Beiwas organized by military intelligence rather than by the OGPU, the documents seized during the raid on the Soviet embassy provide a

jing

some of the methods used by both

revealing insight into agencies.

Chinese lies,

One

intelligence

of instructions for the recruitment of "lower grade"

set

staff in foreign legations ("office boys,

etc.") suggested:

watchmen, house coo-

"Very suitable recruiting agents may prove

those [Communist] Party workers

who

[to be]

are sufficiently trained to carry

out the enlisting of secret agents on the basis of idealistic considerations."

The agents

recruited were to collect torn-up

documents from

embassy wastepaper baskets, "spoiled typewritten sheets, first proof sheets from all kinds of duplication machines, etc." Special attention should be paid to the stencils used in duplicating machines:

The agents who

steal material

of this kind should be encour-

aged with pecuniary rewards. These rewards, however, must be small for two reasons: a.

A

amount of money

large

in the

hands of agents may

arouse suspicion in other Chinese servants of the office in question

and through them become known to

their

masters. b.

On no

account should the agent have any chance to

suspect that he

which

is

as soon as

with

us.

him

that

On we

supplying us with valuable material for

an opportunity occurs he

the contrary,

we must always

are waiting for something

from him, and

if

we pay him

extra

it is

may

bargain

point out to

more important only because

we

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

hope he

be more successful in future. Hence

will

clear that the salary of such agents

more than the

little

salary

89

it is

must be only very

which they are getting from

their masters.

For good work by the secret agents, the recruiting agents must be given rewards as they are, properly speaking, the moving power behind this work. Secret agents should be instructed to

outward devotion and attachment" their to be

show

"industry, punctuality

to their masters,

and

and generally do

utmost to avoid suspicion. Those handling them needed "always

on guard against

false

information" and alive to the possibility

that an agent might be discovered by his legation

and used

to supply

bogus information. 89

The documents stolen from foreign diplomatic missions, when compared with the ciphered versions, were of great assistance to Soviet code breakers.

was

On

stolen as well.

occasion, as in the Tsarist period, cipher material

90

By

the mid-twenties sigint

was once again emerging Within the

as an important source of Russian diplomatic intelligence.

OGPU

sigint

was the

responsibility of a Special Section (Spets Otdel)

headed by Gleb Ivanovich Boky. The Special Section was already functioning within the to

Cheka

in 1921

but

its

functions at that stage seem

have been rather assorted and largely concerned with labor camps.

Gradually, however, in 1879, the

it

came

to specialize in sigint. Its head,

Boky, born

son of a Ukrainian schoolteacher and an old Bolshevik, had

an exemplary revolutionary record, which included twelve

spells in

two Siberian exiles, and participation in the revolutions of 1905 and October 1917. He headed the Special Department for sixteen years, from 1921 until he was purged in 1937 during the Stalinist

Tsarist

jails,

91

By the mid-twenties the Special Section had succeeded in bugging some Moscow embassies as well as breaking their codes. Boky terror.

was believed

to

have given Chicherin a dramatic demonstration of his

by inviting him to listen to a live relay of Afghan ambassador in Moscow making love to an opera singer who was also employed as an OGPU "swallow." 92 In March 1921, when Soviet Russia began to emerge from diplomatic isolation after the Anglo-Soviet Trade Treaty, her diplomatic intelligence had been feeble. The infant INO's only intelligence on the foreign policy of the "Main Adversary," Great Britain, derived

section's technical virtuosity

the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

90

from the misleading analysis of Arthur Ransome. By the time of Dzerzhinsky's death in July 1926, the situation had been transformed. Soviet sigint,

though not yet

Moscow and mint

elsewhere gave Russia probably the best diplomatic hu-

Moscow, by

in the world.

environment

was once again a major source The penetration of Western embassies in

in the Tsarist class,

of diplomatic intelligence.

for

most Western

At no point between

contrast,

had become too

the wars did SIS even possess a

Like most other Western intelligence services, success to penetrate Russia from across

its

it

an

hostile

intelligence services to operate in at

Moscow

all.

station.

sought with decreasing

frontiers, chiefly

from Fin-

land and the Baltic States. 93 Britain's lack of diplomatic humint, however,

mid-twenties by

was

continuing superiority in sigint and by

its

offset in the its

access to

Comintern communications. High-grade Tsarist diplomatic ciphers, least

defeated

94

foreign cryptanalysts. Soviet diplomatic

all

by contrast, remained vulnerable for a decade

ciphers, tion.

at

during the generation before the First World War, seem to have

The Comintern

Western embassies

in

aware that "many of governments." 95

and

intelligence

after the

Revolu-

period was probably at least as porous as Moscow. The Comintern leadership was well

at this

its

MI5 and

secrets

were penetrated by agents of foreign

the Special Branch in

London and

the Intelli-

gence Bureau of the British Raj in Delhi successfully intercepted a

stream of Comintern communications to and from British and Indian

Communists. Indian Communists now use these intercepts as an important source for their to cover it

up

its

own

own

history.

96

The Comintern sometimes sought

security lapses for fear that

OGPU would insist that

be more closely supervised. 97

Documents were not found to be missing.

the only Comintern property that were

Vasili Kolarov, the Bulgarian representative

ECCI, once went by night

sleeper to represent the

military celebration at Minsk.

When

on the

Comintern

at a

he awoke, his clothes as well as

had been stolen. Peeping out of the window he saw a welcoming party of officers standing stiffly to attention while a military band struck up martial music. Tension mounted as the band continued his briefcase

to play

and Kolarov

failed to appear. Eventually his

predicament was

discovered and he was smuggled off the train in borrowed overcoat and boots.

The

Togliatti

on the ECCI, Palmiro Togliatti, alias Aino Kuusinen later recalled calling on

Italian representative

Ercoli, suffered a similar fate.

and

his wife in their

Moscow

hotel:

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

I

knocked

not open

at the door. Togliatti

it

as he

answered, but said he could

had nothing on. All

their things

had been

Evidently the thieves had climbed

stolen during the night in

91

by way of the balcony and the open window as the occu-

pants of the

room

lay fast asleep.

Rather more serious was the

98

fact that

Comintern funds intended

for

foreign Communists continued to be embezzled by corrupt couriers or Communist officials. The leading Indian Communist, M. N. Roy, lived in some style in Paris and traveled freely, apparently on misappropriated Comintern funds, while other Indian Communists complained of large sums that, as they euphemistically put it, had gone "astray."

In order to account for his misappropriated funds,

occasion presented the Comintern with a

list

Roy on

at least

one

of nonexistent Indian

Communists whom he had subsidized." The Comintern suffered a particular embarrassment during the British general strike in 1926. Allan Wallenius, the English-speaking

Comintern ers of the

librarian,

London

was given £30,000

dockers.

He

set

to deliver to

Communist

lead-

out for Stockholm with a forged

Swedish passport, boarded a British ship bound for England, and made friends with a stoker

who

explained that as well as being a good

munist himself he knew personally the Communists to

money was

to be delivered.

On

his return,

Kuusinen that the stoker had agreed Kuusinen's wife

Com-

whom

the

Wallenius explained to Otto

to deliver the

money

himself.

later recalled the sequel:

"What was the stoker's name?" asked Otto drily. "He told me his name, but I've forgotten it." Speechless with fury, Otto pointed to the door. Needless to say, the

money never

got to

its

destination.

100

Western governments found, however, that profiting from the Comin-

was attended by a number of pitfalls. Genuine intercepted Comintern communications were an intelligence source sometimes muddied by forged documents. White Russian forgers in Berlin, Reval, and Warsaw were constantly producing forged Soviet and Comintern documents of varying plausibility as a means both of earning money and of discrediting the Bolsheviks. From time to time Western governments and intelligence services were taken in. In September 1921 the Foreign Office suffered the extreme embarrasstern's regular lapses of security

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

92

ment of citing in an official protest note to Moscow a series of Soviet and Comintern documents which it later discovered to have been forged in Berlin. Sir

Wyndham

Childs, assistant commissioner in charge of the

Branch from 1921

Special

to 1928,

found the forgers "an intolerable

nuisance," for "they gave the Russians an opportunity to shout

when a genuine document was being dealt with." 101 The charge that genuine intercepted documents were

gery'

'for-

in fact all

became one of the most successful forms of OGPU and Comintern disinformation. The most celebrated example of such disin-

forgeries rapidly

formation concerns the so-called "Zinoviev letter" dated September 1924, intercepted by SIS

and published

15,

during the general

in the press

campaign of October 1924. This document, which instructed British Communists to put pressure on their Labour sympathizers, intensify "agitation-propaganda work in the armed forces" and generelection

ally

prepare for the coming of the British revolution, was widely

though wrongly

—believed

time to have

at the

won

the election for the

Labour government. The original of the Zinoviev letter has since disappeared, and it is now impossible to be certain whether it was genuine or not. There was no shortage of forged Comintern documents on offer, but there was no shortage either of genuine Comintern intercepts. The incoming Conservative government claimed substantial corroboration for the Zinoviev letter from other intelligence sources, which are now known Conservatives and ended the

to

have included a "trusted"

who

of Britain's

life

MI5

first

agent at the British

Communist Party

on other Comintern communications. 102 The British Communist Party was formally rebuked by the Comintern at the end of 1924 for its carelessness

headquarters

in

regularly provided reliable intelligence

handling secret documents. 103

Zinoviev letter was genuine or,

Two

contained were sufficiently close to

munication for the

MI5

possibilities remain. Either the

was forged, the instructions it those in a genuine Comintern com-

if it

agent to confuse the two. 104

Whether or not the Comintern was right to claim that the Zinoviev letter was a forgery, there is no doubt that it built upon that claim a successful campaign of disinformation designed to demonstrate that

it

reality

never sent instructions to it

Moscow sent

sent quite regularly. visit in

member parties of a kind which in The centerpiece of its campaign was a

November 1924 by

from London

a naive three-man

TUC delegation

Comintern files in order to establish the truth about the Zinoviev letter. Aino Kuusinen later described the "three days and nights of feverish activity" necessary to remove secret to inspect

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

93

Communists and other "compromising documents" from the Comintern archives before the delegates arrived. Even the register of daily correspondence was entirely rewritten in a sanitized instructions to British

form: result was that the trio were completely misled and the Comintern was absolved of any subversive and secret activities in England. After the delegation had left, there was

The

general relief and everyone had a good laugh over the fact that they

had been able

to pull the

wool so

easily over the

Englishmen's eyes. 105

One

of the results of the Zinoviev letter affair was that the secret

of the Comintern's the

OGPU

OMS

and, on

was thenceforth subject

work

to

increased the

monitor

its

by

military matters, by Soviet military intelligence

(then the Fourth Bureau of the General Staff, later the

OGPU

work

to greater control

number of

its

secret work.

improve the security of

agents within the

OMS

net-

simultaneously took steps to

communications. In 1925 Abramov, Pyat-

its

nitsky's chief assistant in

own

OMS

GRU). 106 The

OMS,

founded a secret school

Moscow

in the

suburb of Mytishchi to train foreign Comintern radio operators to

communicate with

OMS

by coded radio messages. After Wallenius's

bungled attempt to send funds to Communist dockers during the British general strike of 1926, a nist

more

merchant seamen was

intelligence,

reliable courier

system using

Commu-

up under the supervision of military with the help of Edo Fimmen, head of the Hamburg Seaset

men and Transport Workers' Union. The chosen was tested

in a series

reliability

of the couriers

dummy

packages before

of trial runs with

they were used in earnest. 107

Despite the growing success of Soviet espionage during the 1920s,

main

target

remained not

capitalist

governments but, as

at the

its

founda-

end of the Civil War the had been located on Russian soil. of the White armies in November 1920,

tion of the Cheka, counterrevolution. Until the

chief counterrevolutionary threat

With the evacuation of the last the main bases of counterrevolution moved abroad. On December

1,

1920, Lenin instructed Dzerzhinsky to devise a plan to neutralize these

Four days later Dzerzhinsky proposed a multipronged attack: more hostage taking from among the families in Russia of prominent

bases.

emigres, special detachments to attack emigre leaders in their foreign

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

94

and an expansion of the deception techniques using agents 108 "For the detection provocateurs that had defeated the Lockhart plot. of foreign agencies on our territories," Dzerzhinsky proposed to "orga109 The threat to the Bolnize pretended White Guard associations." shevik regime from the White Guards after their defeat in the Civil War was always slight, but in Lenin's mind it assumed enormous propor-

bases,

tions.

He

Comintern Congress

told the Third

Now,

after

in July 1921:

we have repulsed the attack of international coun-

terrevolution, there has been

formed abroad an organization

of the Russian bourgeoisie and of all the Russian counterrevolutionary parties. scattered through

The number of Russian all

emigres,

who

are

foreign countries, might be counted at

from one and a half to two million. We can observe them all working jointly abroad irrespective of their former politi.

cal parties.

.

.

They

.

.

.

are skillfully taking advantage of every

opportunity in order, in one form or another, to attack Soviet

Russia and smash her to pieces. ... In certain respects

must learn from

this

we

enemy. These counterrevolutionary

emigres are very well informed, excellently organized, and

good

strategists.

army

learns

ity

There is an old proverb that a beaten much. They are learning with the greatest avid.

.

.

and have achieved great successes.

Lenin appealed to "our foreign comrades" to keep the White Guards under surveillance. 110

in their countries

The

KGB

still

numbers among

its

greatest past triumphs the

deception operations against the White Guards after the Civil War.

—code-named Sindikat and Trest (Trust)—

figure

prominently in the training courses on "active measures" at the

FCD

Two

such operations

Andropov

Institute.

111

man believed to be the most White Guards: Boris Savinkov, former Socialist Revolutionary terrorist and deputy minister of war to Kerensky. DurSindikat was targeted against the

dangerous of

all

the

War of 1920 Savinkov had headed the antiBolshevik Russian Political Committee (RPC) in Warsaw and was ing the Russo-Polish

Army, which Red Army. In January 1921 the RPC a new organization

largely responsible for recruiting the Russian People's

fought under Polish

command

against the

Savinkov formed from the remnants of

dedicated to the overthrow of the Bolsheviks: the People's Union for

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

95

Defense of Country and Freedom (NSZRiS), which ran an agent net-

work

in Soviet

Russia to collect intelligence and prepare for risings

against the regime. 112 According to the Soviet version of events, "nearly all

Savinkov's agents were simultaneously on Poland's payroll, with the

them across the border." 113 Despite Polish assistance and smaller subsidies from the French, British, and Czechs, Savinkov hovered on the brink of bankruptcy. The SIS station chief in Warsaw reported to "Head Office" in June 1921: "The position is becoming desperate. The balance in hand today amounts to 700,000 Polish police helping to put

Polish Marks, not even sufficient to pay [Savinkov's] staff their salaries for the

month of

July."

114

Savinkov's most serious problem, though he did not realize

was not

December ceived a

1920, just as Savinkov

visit in

it,

Western funds, but Soviet penetration. In

his shortage of

was organizing the NSZRiS, he

Poland from the deputy chief of

staff

re-

of the Soviet

Gomel, Aleksandr Eduardovich Opperput, an anti-Bolshevik underground and brought

Internal Service Troops in

who claimed

to belong to

with him a suitcaseful of fabricated secret documents. Opperput's real

name was

Pavel Ivanovich Selyaninov and he was to prove himself one

of the Cheka's most successful agents provocateurs. 115 His unusual

name should

have aroused some suspicion at a time when the was introducing so many abbreviations into the Russian language. "Opperput" looks suspiciously like an abbreviated combination of Operatsiya (Operation) and Putat' (Confuse): "Operation Confuse." Neither Savinkov nor the Western intelligence services with whom Opperput came into contact grasped the significance of his name, and he continued to confuse both for a number of years. Savinkov itself

Soviet regime

recruited

Opperput as one of

him Most forty-four were given a show trial preserve his cover, it was reported that his chief lieutenants, thus enabling

members of were rounded up by the Cheka and to identify the leading

the

NSZRiS on

Soviet

soil.

August 1921. In order to Opperput himself had been arrested. 116 in

The official

intelligence supplied

by Opperput provided the basis for an

Soviet protest to the Polish government against Savinkov's at-

Warsaw base. In October establish a new base first in

tempts to provoke anti-Soviet risings from his 1921, at Polish insistence, Savinkov

Prague, then in Paris. 117 Sindikat-2,

now

left

The second

to

stage of the

Cheka

operation,

began, designed to disrupt what remained of Savin-

kov's organization in both Russia and the West, and finally to lure

Savinkov himself back to a show

trial in

Moscow. The operation was

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

96

simplified

by Savinkov's increasingly unstable hold on

reality.

Late in

1921 he visited England, renewed his acquaintance with Winston Churchill, and began a high-level round of visited the

visits.

Russian trade delegation in London.

visit that its

Remarkably, he even

He

claimed after his

head, Krasin, deeply impressed by his vision of a post-

Bolshevik Russia, had suggested that he join the Soviet government. Sir

Mansfield

Cumming,

on

chief of SIS, told the Foreign Office, probably

the basis of Krasin's intercepted telegrams, not to trust Savinkov's

account: he had in reality "met with a far from favorable reception" by the trade delegation. Shortly before the Christmas holidays Churchill

motored down to Chequers with Savinkov to see the prime minister. They found Lloyd George surrounded by Free Church ministers and a Welsh choir, who sang hymns in Welsh for several hours. When the hymns were over, Savinkov tried and failed to win Lloyd George over to his visionary schemes. Savinkov, however, later gave a quite different

version of the meeting, in which the hymns sung by the Welsh choir became transformed into a rendering of "God Save the Tsar" by Lloyd George and his family. 118

Though

increasingly a fantasist, Savinkov remained a charis-

matic figure for his dwindling band of followers. Even Churchill

re-

"When all is said and done," he wrote, "and with all the stains and tarnishes there be, few men tried more, gave

tained

some admiration

for him.

more, dared more and suffered more for the Russian people." 119 In the

summer officer,

of 1922 Savinkov's aide, L. D. Sheshenya, a former Tsarist

was captured by Soviet border guards

Polish frontier.

On GPU

emigre supporters

in

instructions,

as he crossed the Russo-

Sheshenya wrote to Savinkov's

Poland reporting that he had made contact

Russia with a well-urganized anti-Bolshevik underground.

A

in

senior

KRO officer, A.

P. Fyodorov, then paid several visits to Poland posing Mukhin, one of the leaders of the imaginary Moscow underground, and persuaded the head of the Savinkov organization in Vilno, Ivan Fomichov, to return with him to Russia. In Moscow Fomichov

as A. P.

held talks with a group of

GPU

agents provocateurs posing as leaders

of the underground, and agreed to ask Savinkov to assume leadership of their group. 120 In July 1923 "Mukhin" met Savinkov in Paris. The Moscow underground, he told him, was deeply divided over tactics and desperately needed his experienced leadership. Instead of going to Moscow himself, however, Savinkov sent his aide, Colonel Sergei Pavlovsky. his arrival in

Moscow

in

On

September, Pavlovsky was arrested and, ac-

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

KGB's

cording to the

sanitized account of the case, after being initially

"very aggressive," "he too agreed to help and the

GPU

a role to play." Pavlovsky's part in the deception

was

Moscow

too.

of messages urging Savinkov to

Savinkov

97

come

to

to send a series 121

In July 1924

decided to return to Russia, and

at last fell for the bait,

come

telegraphed to his old friend and collaborator Sidney Reilly to

New York and help him plan his secret mission On August 15, after three weeks' discussion with

over from

homeland.

Savinkov crossed the Russian border with some

walked straight into an

OGPU

trap.

ance rapidly collapsed. At a show

him

assigned

122

trial

to his Reilly,

of his supporters and

Under interrogation his resiston August 27 Savinkov made

a full confession:

I

unconditionally recognize Soviet power and none other.

To

every Russian

who

loves his country

I,

who have

tra-

versed the entire road of this bloody, heavy struggle against you,

I

who

you as none other

refuted

down

did,

I tell

him

that

if

you love your people, you will bow worker-peasant power and recognize it without

you are a Russian, to

if

any reservations. In return for his recantation Savinkov escaped the death sentence and

was given ten years

in prison.

According

to the official

KGB

version

of events, he threw himself to his death from an unbarred prison win-

dow

May

in

1925.

123

In reality, as the current

aware, Savinkov was pushed to his death

byanka. The

number of

site

was

KGB

KGB

down

leadership

several times pointed out to Gordievsky

veterans. All

well

is

a stairwell in the Lu-

by a

were convinced Savinkov had been

pushed.

Even more of a fictitious

was the Cheka's invention monarchist underground, the Monarchist Association of

Central Russia

which

(MOR),

for six years

modern

tions in

successful than Sindikat

better

known by

was one of the

intelligence history.

its

classic

The

cover

name

Trest (Trust),

peacetime deception opera-

Trust's chief targets were

two

of the principal White Russian emigre groups: the Supreme Monarchist

(VMS) based in Berlin, and the Russian Combined Services Union (ROVS), headed by General Aleksandr Kutepov in Paris. The existence of the nonexistent MOR was first revealed in the late autumn of 1921 to the VMS delegate in Reval, Yuri Artamonov, by a KRO Council

officer,

Aleksandr Yakushev,

who

claimed to be a secret

member

of the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

98

Trust able to travel abroad as a Soviet trade representative. Through

Artamonov the KRO was able to make contact with the VMS. In 1922 Artamonov moved to Warsaw, where he became the ROVS representative and provided a channel of communication with General Kutepov in Paris. Over the next few years Yakushev and other Trust representatives supplied by the KRO paid a series of visits to Germany, France, White Russian emigre Yakushev was accompanied by General Nikolai Potapov, a former Tsarist officer who had sided with the Bol-

and Poland, expanding communities. On some

their contacts with the trips

sheviks soon after the Revolution but

of staff in the

MOR.

now

claimed to be military chief

124

The main role in winning the confidence of General Kutepov, who was more alert than most White Guards to the possibility of Soviet deception, was played by Maria Zakharchenko-Schultz, the widow of two Tsarist officers. After her first husband's death in the Great War Maria left her baby with friends and joined the army at the front as a volunteer. Her second husband was killed fighting in the Civil War, after which Maria retreated with White forces into Yugoslavia. In 1923 she joined Kutepov's organization, was given the code name Niece and traveled to Russia to

make

contact with the Trust. Pepita Reilly, last

wife of the celebrated British agent, described Zakharchenko-Schultz as "a slender

woman

with plain yet attractive, capable face, steady,

honest, blue eyes, obviously well-bred, and answering very well to

Sidney's description of her as a school ma'rm." Zakharchenko-Schultz

contributed so effectively to the Trust's success that she has inevitably

been accused of being a conscious agent of operation taught at the

FCD

Andropov

125

it.

Institute,

The

version of the

however, portrays

her, probably correctly, as an unconscious agent cleverly manipulated by Aleksandr Opperput, who seduced her during her visit to Moscow and continued an affair with her over the next few years. 126 Zakharchenko-Schultz's mixture of passion and naivete, combined with her ability to

win the confidence of both Kutepov and

Reilly,

made

her one

of the Trust's most important assets.

the

The Trust provided the KRO with a means both of penetrating main White Guard emigre groups and of flushing out their remain-

ing sympathizers in Russia

itself. It

also deceived in varying degrees the

intelligence services of Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Britain,

France.

KRO,

Roman

Birk, the Estonian trade official blackmailed

and

by the

acted as one of the couriers between the White Guards and the

nonexistent

MOR.

Polish diplomats allowed

MOR messages to be sent

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

in their diplomatic bags.

127

The passage of Trust

99

representatives across

the Russian frontier was supposedly facilitated by an NCO in the Soviet border guards, Toivo V'aha, who, though in the pay of Finnish military 128 According to a Soviet intelligence, was in reality working for KRO.

no fewer than eight members of the Trust received

official history,

rewards of various kinds from the Western intelligence services they

had deceived. 129 There

is

some corroboration

for this claim: at least

Trust agent appears to have received a gold watch from Polish gence.

130

The

Trust's most spectacular

believed by the since his

coup was

its

success in luring to

"master spy" Sidney Reilly, wrongly

his destruction the alleged British

KRO to be its most dangerous foreign

Moscow

tion of Russia"

from the Bolsheviks as "a most sacred duty." "I also

end of the war, "that the devote the rest of still

talent

my

more the Foreign

and fondness

state

wicked

should not lose

life

to this kind of

Office,

my

Cumming, services.

I

at the

would

work." But Cumming,

had become wary of

Reilly's erratic

for bizarre operations, such as the attempted re-

moval of Lenin's and Trotsky's

Cumming's peacetime SIS.

opponent. Ever

adventures in 1918, Reilly had regarded the "salva-

venture to think," he told the SIS chief, Sir Mansfield

and

one

intelli-

staff

trousers.

He was

refused a job on

and retained only a loose connection with

131

For several years

after the

war

Reilly plunged into a variety of

business ventures on both sides of the Atlantic, ranging from Czech

radium exports

to

an allegedly miraculous new medicine named

"Humagsolan," none of which made him the fortune he had expected. Simultaneously he pursued a series of sometimes fantastic schemes to bring down the Bolsheviks. His chief confederate in the early 1920s was Boris Savinkov. It was Reilly who in 1922 brought Savinkov to Britain, in defiance of instructions from both Cumming and the Foreign Office, for the round of visits that ended with his bizarre encounter with Lloyd George at Chequers. Reilly's hold on reality became increasingly uncertain. According to one of his secretaries, Eleanor Toye, "Reilly used to suffer from severe mental crises amounting to delusion. Once he thought he was Jesus Christ." 132 Soviet intelligence, however, interpreted Reilly's eccentric schemes to overthrow the Bolshevik regime as evidence not of his declining hold on reality but of an elaborate conspiracy by SIS approved at the highest level within Whitehall. By 1924 it had become a major priority of the Trust operation to neutralize Reilly by luring him across the Russian frontier. Even today Reilly still retains

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

100

KGB

within the

his

undeserved reputation as a British master spy.

The OGPU's plans

were unwittingly assisted

to capture Reilly

Commander Ernest Boyce, who had been

SIS station chief

by

his friend

in

Russia during Reilly's 1918 adventures. Boyce had been deeply

impressed by Reilly's

flair

and bravado.

Politically naive himself,

failed to grasp the impracticality of Reilly's

Bolsheviks. In 1919 Boyce

main base

became SIS

he

schemes to overthrow the

station chief in Helsinki, the

for British intelligence operations against Russia.

His enthu-

siasm for the Trust rivaled his admiration for Reilly. Even after Savinkov's

show

trial in

August 1924, Boyce remained convinced that the

Trust was growing in strength and even had secret supporters within the Soviet government. Despite instructions from the SIS head office

him

not to become involved in Reilly's schemes, Boyce wrote to

in

January 1925 asking him to meet representatives of the Trust in Paris. Reilly, then in

New York with

ing about him, replied in in

"a hellish state ...

and prospects of

I

his

March am,

real action,

at

American business ventures

collaps-

that though his personal affairs were

any moment,

if I

see the right people

prepared to chuck everything else and

devote myself entirely to the Syndicate's [Trust's] interests." 133 After a

number of

delays caused by Reilly's "hellish" debt-

ridden business dealings, he arrived in Paris on September

had

talks with

Boyce and General Kutepov, and decided

3,

where he

to proceed to

Finland to meet representatives of the Trust. Kutepov, however, tried to discourage Reilly

from

visiting

Russia

itself.

while, sought to provide additional evidence of

gling out of Russia Boris

134

The

Trust,

its reliability

mean-

by smug-

Bunakov, the brother of Boyce's "head agent,"

Nikolai Bunakov. Another Trust courier subsequently brought out

much attached. Even then, Boyce nor Reilly smelled a rat. Reilly arrived in Helsinki on September 21, then traveled with Nikolai Bunakov and Maria ZakharBoris Bunakov's violin, to which he was neither

chenko-Schultz to Viborg for a meeting with the Trust's chief representative, Yakushev. Reilly had originally intended to go no further than Viborg. Yakushev, however, successfully appealed to Reilly's van-

and delusions of grandeur, persuading him that it was vital for him to meet the Trust leadership in Russia. Reilly was assured that he would be back in Finland in time to catch a boat leaving Stettin on Septemity

ber 30. 135

He

kov with a

left

for the Russian border with

letter for his wife, Pepita,

case of a mischance befalling me."

Yakushev, leaving Buna-

"only for the most improbable

Even if "the Bolshies" were to it was inconceivable that they

question him, Reilly assured his wife,

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

would in

realize his true identity: "If

Russia

new

it

I

should be arrested

could be only on some minor, insignificant charge and

friends are powerful

was due

Reilly

He

ber 28-29.

by any chance

101

to

failed to

enough to obtain my prompt liberation." 136 return from Russia on the night of Septem-

do

so.

Instead the

OGPU

staged a dramatic

piece of theater designed to impress Finnish military intelligence SIS.

my

That night shots were heard near the

village of Allekul

and

on the

and a man was seen being carried away on guards. When Toivo Vaha, the Soviet frontier

Soviet side of the border,

a stretcher by frontier

guard

who had

helped to smuggle Trust emissaries and couriers

across the border in apparent collaboration with the Finns (but in reality

on

OGPU

instructions), failed to

renew contact with Finnish

and the Finns concluded, as the OGPU had intended, that he and Reilly had been killed or captured during

military intelligence, both SIS

137 the frontier crossing.

According to the current, probably embroidered, Soviet version of

how

Reilly

into Russia

met

his end,

on September

he was not arrested immediately he crossed 25. Instead

he was taken by Yakushev to a

dacha near Moscow to meet a group of

OGPU

as the "political council" of the Trust. Reilly

masquerading

officers

was asked

to put

his plan of action and, according to the Soviet account,

nancing the Trust's

activities

was

West.

He was

then arrested. After

on him in December 1918

told that the death sentence passed

absentia at the end of the "Lockhart plot" trial in

would be carried

fi-

by burglarizing Russian museums and

selling their art treasures in the

interrogation Reilly

forward

proposed

out. Soviet accounts allege that in a vain

attempt to

save himself he sent a personal appeal to Dzerzhinsky:

After prolonged deliberation,

I

express willingness to give

you complete and open acknowledgment and information on matters of interest to the

OGPU concerning the organization

and personnel of the British Intelligence Service and, so far as I know it, similar information on American Intelligence and likewise about Russian emigres with whom I have had business.

Had Reilly really been prepared to cooperate with he would doubtless have been given a show

3,

1925. 138

OGPU, however,

trial like

stead, according to the Soviet version of events,

ber

the

Savinkov's. In-

he was shot on Novem-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

102

Several years after Reilly had been lured back to Russia, the

OGPU fate.

was

still

spreading mystification and disinformation about his

The Trust deception continued

traveled

until 1927. Pepita Reilly,

to Paris then to Helsinki to seek

first

became one of its

victims. Before meeting

Mrs. Reilly "had very

in Helsinki,

provocation agent."

As soon

Maria Zakharchenko-Schultz

little

as she

who

news of her husband,

met

doubt but that she was a her,

however,

Pepita's

all

doubts dissolved:

my

At

first

second

I

glance

knew

decided that

I

that

I

was going

I

could trust her. At

to like this

my

woman.

me thus, looking very mournful, very desolate, very Mme. Schultz embraced me with great emotion, tell-

Seeing lonely,

ing

me

that she felt herself entirely responsible for

band's death, and that she would not rest until

all

my

cumstances had been discovered and a rescue effected

were

still alive,

or a revenge secured

if

he were

hus-

the cirif

he

in truth dead.

was little doubt that Sidney was dead. She produced a clipping from Izvestia that gave the

But, added Zakharchenko-Schultz, there Reilly

authorized version of the bogus gun battle at Allekul on the night of

September 28-29, and reported that "four smugglers" had been caught trying to cross the border;

two had been

killed,

one taken prisoner, and

wounds while being taken to Petrograd. According to the evidence she had collected, it was Reilly who had died of his wounds on the way to Petrograd without the Bolsheviks' realizing the fourth had died of his

who he

was. 139

Despite Pepita Reilly's confidence in Maria ZakharchenkoSchultz herself, she was highly skeptical of her story.

had a

false passport

tailored shirt

and underwear carrying

an inscription Pepita.

The

and a borrowed

in English. In his

OGPU

suit,

Though

Reilly

he was wearing a specially

his initials as well as a

watch with

pocket was a signed photograph of

could thus hardly have failed to realize that they

had captured the celebrated

British master spy

and would,

in his wife's

view, certainly have shouted their triumph from the housetops. Zakhar-

chenko-Schultz admitted that

promised to work with Pepita

all

this

had not occurred to her but

in discovering

"the truth." 140 Before long

Mrs. Reilly came close to a nervous breakdown:

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

I

called for revenge.

.

.

.

Mme.

Schultz stood over me, kind,

capable, sensible, sympathetic. She asked

completely.

the organization.

Moscow

center

of "Viardo."

me

to trust her

took her hand dumbly. She asked

I

I

I

trusted her.

me

to join

With the approval of the

joined the "Trust" under the party

And

thus

it

103

was that

I

stepped into

name

my

hus-

band's place in the ranks of anti-Bolshevism.

With the encouragement of the Trust Mrs. Reilly placed a notice of her husband's death in The Times (London): "Sidney George Reilly killed September 28th by G.P.U. troops

Though that

it

at the village of Allekul, Russia."

she did not believe that Reilly was

would force the Bolsheviks

still

alive,

she naively hoped

to reveal her husband's fate.

Soviet press simply confirmed the fact of Reilly's death lished "horrible lies" about him.

"The whole power,

and

But the

later

pub-

She was consoled by the belief that

influence, intelligence of the Trust

was being em-

ployed to find out the truth of what had happened to Sidney." Early letter from the leaders of the Trust Yakushev and Opperput) encouraging her to visit Russia once she had learned some Russian "so that you could take an active part in the work and so that we could introduce you to the members of our group." In the meantime Maria Zakharchenko-Schultz told Pepita that she was "devoting her life to finding out what had really happened to Sidney Reilly." She sent letters in secret ink to Pepita in Paris from Petrograd, Helsinki, and Warsaw: "True to her promise," wrote Mrs. Reilly, "she was leaving no stone unturned." 141 The Trust's main problem in dealing with Western intelligence services was in responding to the requests it received to provide military intelligence. The OGPU was happy to provide political disinformation but found it more difficult to concoct bogus but plausible intelligence on the Soviet armed forces and arms industry. The Trust thus usually fended off approaches from SIS and other intelligence services by insisting that it was dedicated to preparing the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime and that this objective might be prejudiced by the search for military intelligence. 142 What was probably its first major foray into military disinformation ended in near disaster. Soon after Marshal Pilsudski became Polish minister of war (and, in effect though not in

in

1926 Mrs. Reilly received a

(including

name, head of government)

in 1926,

he instructed his general

staff to

ask the Trust to obtain the Soviet mobilization plan. Yakushev was

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

104

after some hesitation, agreed to supply the plan for The document provided by the Trust, however, contained

approached and, $10,000.

patently false data on the Russian railways just across the Polish border. After

returned gery."

and

143

it

examining the alleged Soviet mobilization plan, Pilsudski to his general staff with the

one-word comment "For-

Following the suspicions aroused by the traps

Reilly, the failure of probably the Trust's first

military disinformation clearly indicated that

its

set for

Savinkov

major exercise

in

days were numbered.

In the spring of 1927 Zakharchenko-Schultz wrote a tearful letter to

Mrs. Reilly (and doubtless also to Kutepov) reporting her

discovery that the Trust was "full of provocateurs": 'All

with what work to which I gave everything bush had been "all lies and acting": is

impossible to go on

living

years'

Your husband was

He

killed in a

I

is lost.

... It

have just learned after four

so joyfully."

The Allekul am-

cowardly and ignoble fashion.

never reached the frontier. This whole comedy was

staged for the rest of us.

He was

captured at Moscow, and

imprisoned in the Lubyanka as a privileged prisoner. Each

day he was taken out for exercise

in a car

and on one of these

occasions he was killed from behind on the orders of one of the chiefs of the

GPU — Artuzov,

an old personal enemy of

who thus took his revenge in such a base manner. The fact that I did not know this does not diminish my responsihis

.

bility.

my

His blood

life.

I shall

first

.

is upon my hands, it will remain there all wash them by avenging him in a terrible

manner or by dying Mrs. Reilly's

.

in the attempt.

reaction

was one of sympathy

for

Zakharchenko-

Schultz:

It

must have been

terrible for

Marie

to

have the realization

forced upon her that for

all these years she had been the dupe of the Soviets and that through her so many people, including the husband of her dearest friend, had been killed

or captured.

Pepita did not believe her friend's version of Reilly's death but assumed that she

had been taken

in

by another deception. Zakharchenko-

Schultz ended her letter by asking for "one more favor."

Would

Pepita

Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)

105

144 send her everything she could discover about Opperput?

Unaware

that

Maria was Opperput's

mistress, Pepita replied

by

sending a dossier on Opperput which, she naively believed, "would

have surprised the worthy gentleman had he known." ZakharchenkoSchultz replied that Opperput had said he

had been forced

to

now admitted

everything to her, but

become an agent provocateur

after being

tortured in 1921:

Now

he

is

unfolding everything, he

tives of the other countries

who

is

helping the representa-

are being fooled

rounded by Bolshevik agents to escape from position.

By

and

145

the time she wrote this letter Zakharchenko-Schultz

lover

Opperput

ing the

sur-

this terrible

work of

in

was with her

Finland, where he was ostensibly engaged in expos-

the Trust. Opperput's public confessions to the press,

as well as his private briefings to

White Russian emigres and Western

intelligence services, were, however, simply the final stage in the deception. Since the

OGPU own

deception could clearly no longer be continued, the

had decided

to

end

it

in a

reputation and demoralize

nouncing the

OGPU,

that

would both enhance

fighting against

it.

And

its

omnipotence

he exaggerated the

opponents, claiming for example that the Polish

intelli-

gence service had been practically taken over by Soviet agents. 146

Scandinavian intelligence

its

opponents. While apparently de-

Opperput constantly emphasized

and the impossibility of failings of its

manner its

officer later

One

claimed that after Opperput's

disclosures the intelligence services of Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Britain,

and France "were

for

some time

scarcely on speaking

terms." 147 In

May

1927 Zakharchenko-Schultz and Opperput returned to

Russia. Before leaving they tried to persuade Pepita Reilly, like her

husband two years

earlier, to cross the

border with them. But the

telegram sent to Paris asking her to join them was handed by American

Express to the wrong Mrs. Reilly and reached Pepita a fortnight

Had

it

reached her

in time,

late.

she would have tried to persuade Zakhar-

chenko-Schultz that Opperput was "a transparent provocateur," whose "diabolical cunning"

was luring her

to her

doom.

General Kutepov believed that Zakharchenko-Schultz's discovery of the Trust's deception had "unhinged her mind": "She seemed

bent on returning to Russia to wreak her vengeance on the people

who

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

106

had duped

whom

her,

and thus

to cleanse herself of the blood of the

many

Not long after her Mrs. Reilly received the news they had been return, Kutepov and expecting. Zakharchenko-Schultz had shot herself rather than be captured.

unwittingly she had sent to their death."

"And

thus," wrote Mrs. Reilly, "died the bravest of

women, who fought

all

against the tyrants of their country."

Russian

Kutepov

probably agreed. 148 Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda, deputy head of the

OGPU,

claimed in an interview with Pravda that both Zakharchenko-

Schultz and Kutepov were long-standing SIS agents. 149

Nowadays the KGB publicly celebrates Sindikat and Trest as two of its greatest victories over counterrevolutionary conspiracy and Western intelligence services. But at the same time it continues part of the deception plans on which they were based. The Cheka agents provocateurs who launched both operations, Opperput and Yakushev, are still alleged to have begun as, respectively, "a follower of Savinkov" and "a monarchist" before seeing the light and agreeing to cooperate with the OGPU. 150 Twenty years after the Trust was exposed it was to become the model for a further series of deception operations against both SIS and the CIA.

4 Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

Among the most pious passages in KGB literature are those that chronicle

the final hours of

20, 1926," writes

its first

chairman, Feliks Dzerzhinsky.

Fyodor Fomin, the most senior of the

to survive the Stalinist purges,

"he

fell

"On

July

early Chekists

at his post of duty, fighting the

enemies of the Party." Only three hours before his death Dzerzhinsky addressed a plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control

Commission and ist

Party

line,

in a flaming

speech aimed at deviators from the Lenin-

inquired of his audience with, according to Fomin, "com-

plete justification":

Do

you

really

know where my

strength

lies? I

never spare

from various places saying: "Right.") That the reason why everybody here trusts and likes me. I never

myself. (Voices is

speak against the dictates of good conscience, and disorder

I

attack

it

with

all

my

if I

see

strength.

Dzerzhinsky's remarkable tribute to himself was swiftly followed by a

His death provoked an even more fulsome eulogy from the plenum that had heard his final speech: fatal heart attack.

107

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

108

In the most trying times of endless plots and counterrevolutionary uprisings,

when

the Soviet land

was turning

to ashes

of the enemy surrounded the proletar-

and the bloody circle which was fighting

iat

for

its

freedom, Dzerzhinsky dis-

played superhuman energy; day and night, night and day,

without sleep, without food, and without the slightest rest he stayed at his post of duty. Hated by the enemies of the

won even

workers, he

their respect. His princely figure, his

personal bravery, his penetrating comprehension, his directness,

and

authority.

his exceptional nobility, invested

Dzerzhinsky's death came at a convenient

whose victory

him with

great

1

in

Lenin's death was

moment

for

Joseph

Stalin,

the prolonged succession struggle that followed

now almost

certainly have resisted (even

complete. "Iron Feliks" would almost

if in

the end unsuccessfully) the

OGPU's

use against dissent within the Party of the weapons of provocation

and deception that he had no compunction in using against nonCommunists. Since Lenin's death Dzerzhinsky had been chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (Vesenkha) as well as head of the OGPU. He would surely have opposed both the attack on "bourgeois specialists" in industry and the ferocious class war in the countryside that Stalin was to launch within a few years. 2 In the

"flaming speech" delivered three hours before his death he uttered his

most savage

criticism yet of the Party apparatus:

"When

I

look at our

apparatus, at our system of organization, our incredible bureaucracy

and our

utter disorder, cluttered with every sort of red tape,

I

am

literally horrified.''

Dzerzhinsky's

chosen

Menzhinskyra~fall, slender

man

successor,

pliant than his predecessor. Superficially, the in

common. Both were

Vyacheslav

Rudolfovich

with gold-rimmed pince-nez, was more

two men had a good deal

old Bolsheviks of well-to-do Polish ancestry.

Menzhinsky had joined the Cheka Collegium soon after its foundation and became Dzerzhinsky's first deputy chairman on the foundation of the OGPU. He was probably the most intellectual of all KGB heads.

Even the

OGPU defector Georgi Agabekov,

who

took an uncharitable

view of his former colleagues, described him as "a man of profound culture" and "complete education." According to Fomin, Menzhinsky fluent in twelve languages when he joined the Cheka and mastered Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Turkish. He was a

was already later

Stalin

polymath istry,

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

as well as a polyglot,

whose

astronomy, and mathematics.

109

interests included physics,

chem-

4

But Menzhinsky was also a far less powerful figure than his Even Fomin's officially approved eulogy acknowledges

predecessor. that

"He

did not have a

commanding

voice"; for

many

of those

who

worked with him "it was strange to hear an order from the OGPU " Trotsky, chairman which usually began with: 'I humbly request the Menzhinsky era, found the OGPU began in whose persecution by him strangely colorless: "The impression he made on me could best be described by saying that he made none at all. He seemed more like the shadow of some other unrealized man, or rather like a poor sketch for .

.

.'

5

an unfinished portrait."

Menzhinsky was no visited

Trotsky

at the

Stalinist.

During the

Civil

War

he had

Front to warn him that Stalin was conducting "a

very complicated intrigue" against him. But he put up no serious resist-

ance to Stalin's growing power. 6 Even before he succeeded Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky already suffered from angina.

ceived visitors stretched out on a couch in his

room

He commonly in the

re-

Lubyanka.

"The doctors," he explained, "have ordered me to lie down." In April 1929 a serious heart attack put Menzhinsky out of action for two years. He returned to part-time work in 1931, but by 1933 was no longer able to climb the stairs to his apartment in the Kremlin and went into virtual retirement at a dacha outside Moscow. 7

Because of Menzhinsky's leadership,

power within the

failing health

OGPU

and passive

style of

passed increasingly to his more

aggressive deputy chairman, the Jewish Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda.

Yagoda contrasted strikingly with Menzhinsky in manner as well as appearance. Even within the KGB he is nowadays remembered only with embarrassment. Few memoirs of the Stalin era mention his name without execration. "As manifestly as Menzhinsky is a man of complete education," wrote Agabekov, "so is Yagoda brutal, uncultivated, and gross." His coarseness and brutality cannot have been evident when Dzerzhinsky appointed him as second deputy chairman in 1923. To Dzerzhinsky he probably seemed simply an efficient, energetic, ambitious bureaucrat. Yagoda became a classic example of a bureaucrat corrupted by excessive power, with a growing pretentiousness that matched his increasing brutality. On the eve of his fall from power in the summer of 1936, one of his officers found him

Thick-set, with a ruddy complexion,

8

absorbed

in

designing for himself a

new

full-dress uniform: white

woolen tunic decorated with gold braid, a small

gilt

dagger of the kind

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

110

once worn by Tsarist naval imported patent

leather.

blue trousers, and shoes of

officers, light

9

Stalin never wholly trusted

Yagoda, partly because of

his

own

anti-Semitism, partly because of Yagoda's ideological sympathy with the "Right Opposition" and

charismatic leader Nikolai Bukharin.

its

Kamenev

that both Yagoda and Trilisser, second deputy chairman of the OGPU and head of INO, were "with us." Yagoda, he said, had secretly given him information on peasant ris10 ings. But Bukharin also predicted that Yagoda was an opportunist whose support could not be relied on. In 1931 Stalin tried to strengthen his influence in the OGPU by sending a Party apparatchik, A. I. Akulov, to be joint first deputy chairman with Yagoda. Within a year Akulov had been frozen out. Stalin, however, reached an accommodation with Yagoda while waiting for an opportunity to place his own

In 1928 Bukharin told

11

man

at the

head of the

Yagoda was throw

in his lot

OGPU.

a careerist rather than an ideologue, prepared to

with Stalin to further his career but never willing to

him unconditional support.

give

Trilisser

was a more committed sup-

porter of the Right Opposition; as early as 1923 he had joined with

Bukharin

in attacking the Trotskyist line. 12

Yagoda, seeing the Central

But

at the

end of 1929,

Trilisser as a potential rival, successfully intrigued with

Committee

succeeded as head of

to oust

INO

him from the OGPU.

by the former

KRO

Trilisser

was

(Counterespionage)

chief Artur Artuzov. 13

The OGPU's first

successful winding-up of the Trust deception during the

year of the Menzhinsky- Yagoda leadership was overshadowed by

an embarrassing

series of foreign intelligence failures.

the rapidly expanding network of

The

security of

OGPU and military intelligence resi-

dencies was threatened by the vulnerability of Soviet cipher systems and their inexperience in running enthusiastic but local

Communists

sometimes amateurish

as agents. In the spring of 1927 there

were sensa-

tional revelations of Soviet espionage in eight different countries.

In

March

a major spy ring

the White Russian general turned

leading

official in

found engaged police

in

was revealed

OGPU

in Poland,

headed by

agent, Daniel Vetrenko; a

the Soviet-Turkish trade corporation in Istanbul

was

espionage on the Turkish-Iraqi border; and the Swiss

announced the

arrest of

two members of a Soviet spy

ring. In

April a police raid on the Soviet consulate in Beijing uncovered a mass of documents on Soviet espionage; and the French Surete arrested eight

Stalin

members of a of the

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

111

Soviet spy ring run by Jean Cremet, a Politburo

French Communist

Party. In

May

officials

member

of the Austrian for-

eign ministry were found supplying secret information to the residency,

and there was a Special Branch raid

in

OGPU

London on

the

premises of the All-Russian Co-operative Society (Arcos) and the trade

what the excitable British home denounced with some degree of "one of the most complete and one of the most nefarious

delegation, following the discovery of

secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks,

hyperbole as

spy systems that

it

has ever been

my

lot to

The two most traumatic shocks were the police raids publication of

for Soviet foreign espionage

and London, both followed by the

in Beijing

some of

ments published

meet." 14

the intelligence

documents

seized.

The docu-

China provided a wealth of embarrassing

in

detail

on

Soviet secret operations (mostly by military intelligence), including instructions from

Moscow

"not to shrink from any measures, even

including looting and massacres" when promoting conflicts between the Chinese population and Westerners. There were also agents, instructions to Chinese

Communists

operations, and details of munitions smuggled into China. 15

ments published

in

names of

to assist in intelligence

England were fewer and

The docu-

far less dramatic, but

accompanied by the equally embarrassing revelation that Britain had once again broken Soviet diplomatic codes. The prime minister, foreign secretary,

and home secretary

all

read decrypted extracts from inter-

cepted Soviet telegrams to the House of

Commons. 16

the Kremlin and the OGPU of the sensational and London was all the greater because they came at turning points in Russian relations with both China and Britain. Since 1922 Soviet policy in China had been based on an alliance with the Nationalist Kuomintang. In April 1927 a Communist-led rising delivered Shanghai into the hands of the Kuomintang general Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang, said Stalin, "should be squeezed like a lemon and then thrown away." In the event it was the Communists who became the lemon. Having gained control of Shanghai, Chiang began the systematic massacre of the Communists who had captured it for him. The Communists, on Stalin's instructions, replied with a series of armed risings. All were disastrous failures. 17 Revelations of Soviet espionage also led to a break, though of

The impact on

revelations in Beijing

a less brutal kind, in relations with Britain,

Union in

as the leading world power.

May

1926,

which conspiracy

still

regarded in the Soviet

Ever since the British general

strike

theorists in the Conservative Party

had

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

112

wrongly attributed to a Russian

plot, pressure

had been mounting on

Stanley Baldwin's government to break off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Dramatic new evidence of Soviet espionage in the armed services in the spring of 1927

was the

last straw.

On May

26, 1927, Sir

Austen Chamberlain informed the Soviet charge d'affaires, Arkadi Rosengolts, that His Majesty's Government was breaking off diplomatic relations because of "anti-British espionage and propaganda."

He

gave his message an unusually personal point by quoting a decrypted Soviet telegram sent by Rosengolts to

you request material to enable you against His Majesty's Government."

On

his

way home by

tral Station to breakfast

Moscow on

April

1

to support a political

train Rosengolts stopped at

which campaign

"in

Warsaw Cen-

with the Soviet ambassador Pyotr Voikov in

left, Voikov was shot White Russian emigre, who shouted, "This is for Nationalist Russia, not for the International!" The Soviet government was quick to claim that "a British arm directed the blow which killed Voikov." 18 Ironically, during the last of the prewar show trials in 1938, Rosengolts was himself forced to confess to working for British intelligence from 1926 onward. 19 The Soviet intelligence disasters in the spring of 1927 had two immediate consequences. The first was a drastic overhaul of the security

the railway buffet. Just before Rosengolts's train several times by a

of Soviet embassies,

OGPU residencies, and cipher systems. An urgent

and trade delegations ordered the destrucdocuments whose capture might cause fresh embarrassment. Even in Teheran, where the risk of attack on the embassy was insignificant, the huge bonfires of OGPU archives in the diplomatic compound alarmed the local fire brigade. OGPU residencies were ordered to keep on file correspondence for the past month only, and to make plans for

circular to Soviet missions tion of all

its

immediate destruction

in the event of a raid.

New

regulations for

running local Communists as agents were intended to ensure that no future trace survived of their contacts with the

OGPU. 20

and OGPU communicaKremlin ordered the adoption of the laborious but (when correctly used) unbreakable "one-time pad" cipher system. As a result, between 1927 and the Second World War Western cryptanalysts were able to decrypt virtually no high-grade Soviet communications, though GC & CS in Britain continued to have some success with coded Comintern messages and low-level Russian military traffic. A. G. Denniston, the operational head of GC & CS, wrote bitterly that the result of the

To

tions the

protect the security of diplomatic

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

Stalin

government

publicity given by the British

113

to the breaking of Soviet

21 codes had been "to compromise our work beyond question."

These intelligence disasters had a profound Characteristically he

saw them

effect

on

Stalin.

as evidence of a deep-laid imperialist

plot:

It is

hardly open to doubt that the chief contemporary ques-

tion

is

that of the threat of a

new

imperialist war. It

is

a matter of some indefinite and immaterial "danger" of a

war.

It is

a matter of a real

in general,

The

new

and material threat of a new war

and a war against the U.S.S.R.

in particular.

leader in creating "a united imperialist front" against the Soviet

Union, Stalin alleged, was

and

not

its

chief enemy, "the English bourgeoisie

fighting staff, the Conservative Party": "English capitalism

its

always has been,

is,

and

will

continue to be the most ferocious sup-

pressor of popular revolutions." Stalin detected three main stages to

The first was was intended to "redocuments about the disruptive work of the U.S.S.R.,

the plot orchestrated by the Conservative government. the raid on the Soviet embassy in Beijing, which veal 'awful'

thereby creating an atmosphere of general indignation." stage in the plot

was the Arcos

raid in

London and

The second

the breach in

Anglo-Soviet diplomatic relations, designed to "start a diplomatic

blockade of the U.S.S.R. throughout Europe" as a prelude to war.

The

third stage

was the murder of Voikov

Warsaw, "organized by

in

the agents of the Conservative Party" in imitation of the assassination

of the

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

at Sarajevo in

1914, which had

sparked off the First World War. 22

Though

this British "plot"

bly be others. Britain

groups

in the

was continuing

to finance "espionage-terrorist

imperialist powers. Stalin

those leaders of the workers' 'invention,'

who

movement who

were two urgent

denounced

soothe the workers with pacifist

priorities in order to

"all

'consider' the threat of a

shut their eyes to the bourgeoisie's preparations for a

The

inevita-

U.S.S.R." and trying to foment revolts in collusion with

White emigres and other

new war an

had miscarried, there would

lies,

who

new war." There

counter the imperialist threat.

was "strengthening the defensive capacity of our country" by economic growth, especially in war industries, and improving the vigifirst

lance of the Soviet people.

The second

priority

was "strengthening our

rear" by a determined onslaught on alleged internal enemies: terrorists,

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

114

and other "rubbish." The "rubbish,"

industrial wreckers,

plied, included the opposition within the

Communist

Stalin im-

"What can

Party:

its new attacks on new war? What can we say about the same opposition finding it timely, when war threatens, to strengthen

we

say after

of our wretched opposition and

all this

the party in face of the threat of a

on the party?" 23

their attacks

By 1927 the only significant resistance to Stalin's growing personal power came from within the Bolshevik Party. There is no doubt that the war scare came at a convenient moment as Stalin prepared to consolidate his own leadership. But there is equally little doubt that Stalin, the

most "sickly suspicious"

Communist

(to use

own

leaders, believed his

Khrushchev's phrase) of all

conspiracy theory. So, in one

form or another, did most of the Party hierarchy. Indeed almost obliged them to do

so. It

was an

article of

their ideology

Bolshevik faith that

international capitalism could not tolerate the consolidation of Soviet

power. Imperialist governments and their secret services must necessar-

be plotting the overthrow of the "worker-peasant state."

ily

responsibility of the

was the

OGPU as "the shield and sword of the Revolution"

to uncover the inevitable imperialist plots

and nip them

Since no major Western leader from the end of the Civil rise to

It

power of Adolf Hitler

toppling the Bolshevik regime,

in it

in the bud.

War

until the

1933 gave any serious thought to

followed that the only plots that the

OGPU could uncover were imaginary ones.

Stalin

became increasingly

obsessed by imaginary plots. During the decade after the war scare of

1927 he gradually constructed a steadily more comprehensive conspir-

acy theory, which in as

Hitler.

and

Hitler,

murder

its final

form was almost as grotesque, though not

myth of the Jewish world conspiracy that obsessed The two greatest dictators in modern European history, Stalin

venomous,

as the

were both conspiracy theorists

as the only

way

who ended by

seeing

mass

to liquidate the imaginary plots that threatened

them. Their chief accomplices were their security forces.

The his

own

first

use to which Stalin put the

personal authority within the

Cheka's, the

OGPU's

OGPU was to strengthen

Communist

Party. Like the

combat counterrevolution. But the definition of counterrevolution changed. Under Lenin it had meant opposition to the Communist Party. Under Stalin it increasingly meant opposition to Stalin. Since the only significant opposition to Stalin came from other Communists, the OGPU began to use principal duty remained to

within the Party the techniques of infiltration and provocation formerly

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

Stalin

reserved for the Party's opponents.

The

first

115

victims were the "Left

Opposition" led by Trotsky and Zinoviev.

OGPU

In September 1927 an

Opposition uncovered an

illegal

agent provocateur in the Left

"printing shop" (in reality

little

more

than a duplicating machine) on which the opposition planned to print its

program. According to the

Yagoda reported

OGPU defector Aleksandr Orlov,

your secret agent to the rank of an

officer

"Good!

when

Now

promote of General Wrangel and

the discovery, Stalin replied:

Wrangelian White Guardist." Stalin duly reported to the Central Committee and Central Control Commission that the Left Opposition was guilty of collusion with the Whites. In November 1927 Trotsky, Zinoindicate in your report that the Trotskyites collaborated with a 24

viev,

and almost a hundred of

their followers

were expelled from the

denounced "Trotskyism," and was readmitted to the Party. Trotsky refused and in January 1928 was sentenced by the OGPU to internal exile in a remote corner of KazakhParty. Zinoviev agreed to recant,

stan on the Chinese border.

25

Less than a decade later Trotsky became the object of the most

determined manhunt

in

KGB

Trotskyist witch hunt was

removal from

Moscow had

history.

still

In 1928, however, the anti-

in its infancy

about

it

and the great

heretic's

an element of black comedy, which

would have been unthinkable only a few years later. When the OGPU came to his Moscow flat on the morning of January 17 to take him into exile, Trotsky was still in his pajamas. As in prerevolutionary days

when

the police

came to arrest him, he locked himself in

his

room. After

unsuccessful negotiations through the locked door, the officer leading the

OGPU detachment ordered his men to force an entry. Trotsky was

surprised to recognize the officer as one of his former bodyguards

during the Civil War. the officer broke

On

seeing his former commissar in his pajamas

down and sobbed, "Shoot me, Comrade Trotsky,

shoot

me!" Trotsky refused, successfully pacified his one-time bodyguard and persuaded him of his duty to obey orders, reprehensible though they were.

He

then resumed his posture of passive disobedience and refused

either to dress or to leave.

The

OGPU detachment removed Trotsky's

pajamas, put on his clothes, and carried him, amid the protests of his family, to a car waiting to transport press.

him

to the Trans-Siberian Ex-

26

When Trotsky was forced into foreign exile in Turkey in February 1929, the

OGPU did its best to ensure that this time there were no

witnesses of his departure in case he resorted once again to passive

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

116

Together with his wife, elder son Lev Sedov, and an escort

resistance.

of two

OGPU

officers,

he boarded the Ilyich

Odessa harbor, and

in

found no other passengers on board. Even the crew were warned to keep out of sight and avoid contact with Trotsky's group. As the Ilyich entered the Bosporus, one of Trotsky's

$1,500 "to enable him to

settle

OGPU

and took the money. He spent the

his pride

exile in the Soviet

island of Prinkipo.

embassy

escorts

at Istanbul,

first six

weeks of his foreign

moved

then

to the Turkish

27

The witch hunt conducted by

OGPU in the late

the

1920s was directed

against economic as well as political subversion. In

OGPU

handed him

abroad." Penniless, Trotsky swallowed

March 1928

the

announced the discovery of a "counterrevolutionary plot"

in

the Shakhty coal mines of the Donbass basin. According to the most

persuasive account, the plot was

late in 1927 by the Yevdokimov, who reported to Menzhinsky that a group of engineers in the town of Shakhty had conspired with former mine owners in the White Russian diaspora and with Western imperialists to wreck the mines. When Menzhinsky

OGPU

first

uncovered

chief in the northern Caucasus, Y. G.

demanded

Yevdokimov produced a series of intercepted letfrom abroad. Though the letters appeared relatively harmless, Yevdokimov claimed that they contained "wrecking" instructions in a code known only to the engineers. Menzhinsky was skeptical and gave Yevdokimov a fortnight to break the code. At this point Yevdokimov appealed directly to Stalin, who authorized him to arrest the engineers. At a special meeting of the Politburo Stalin was evidence,

ters written to the engineers

authorized to take personal charge of the case. 28

Out of a

series of incidents involving industrial accidents, faulty

machinery, inebriated workers,

inefficient

—

neers, foreign businessmen,

and

of genuine vandalism, the

OGPU

probably

managers, bourgeois engi-

—a limited number of cases

then constructed a "far-reaching

international intrigue" orchestrated from

Warsaw,

Berlin,

and

Paris.

After two months' denunciations by the Soviet media of "dastardly saboteurs, plotters

was

set

and

whole

spies," the

fantastic conspiracy theory

out in a 250,000-word indictment of

German

Their long-drawn-out show

immense

fifty

Russian and three

technicians and engineers accused of sabotage and espionage. trial,

which opened

crystal chandeliers of the

(the prerevolutionary Nobles' Club), sion. In all,

in

Moscow House

May

beneath the

of Trade Unions

had a new audience

at every ses-

over a hundred thousand factory workers, peasants, school-

Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

117

children and other groups of selected spectators witnessed parts of the

Press correspondent, Eugene Lyons, a former

proceedings.

The United

Communist

fellow traveler, wrote afterward:

The few who insisted

their innocence

thrills for spectators.

To

panic in their voices,

.

.

.

provided the biggest

them at bay, their backs arched, turning from a stinging question by the see

prosecutor to ward off a statement by a fellow-prisoner,

swinging around to meet a judge's admonition flailing, still,

stumbling over their

—

own words

—spinning,

finally

standing

exhausted and terror-stricken, staring into the audito-

rium as though aware of spectators for the indeed keen sport: lucky shock-brigadiers

first

time,

was

who drew such

a

session!

The macabre drama played out in the House of Trade Unions was somewhat less brutal than the later show trials of the Stalin era. Only eleven of the alleged Shakhty saboteurs were sentenced to death, and six

were reprieved as a reward for good performances

assigned to them by the tors

OGPU. The

in the roles

great majority both of the specta-

and of Soviet newspaper readers found the drama presented

their edification convincing.

"The

class

enemy

in

for

our midst" conspiring

with counterrevolutionaries abroad provided convenient scapegoats for shortages and privations that might otherwise have been blamed on the leadership. 29

At the April 1928 plenum of the Central Committee

Stalin

himself spelled out the enormous ramifications of the conspiracy legedly uncovered at Shakhty:

would be stupid

assume that international capital will No, comrades, that is not true. Classes exist, international capital exists, and it cannot calmly watch the development of the country which is building socialism. Formerly international capital thought of overthrowing the Soviet power by means of direct military intervention. The It

to

leave us in peace.

failed. Now it is trying, and will try in the future, to weaken our economic power by means of invisible economic

attempt

intervention, not always obvious but fairly serious, organiz-

ing sabotage, planning

all

kinds of "crises" in one branch of

industry or another, and thus facilitating the possibility of

al-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

118

future military intervention.

It is all

part and parcel of the

class struggle of international capital against the Soviet

power, and there can be no talk of any accidental happenings.

Those

30

KGB officers with whom Gordievsky discussed the Shakhty trial

half a century later recognized that

and spy

fever. In

itself to

admit as

of the

KGB

it

was a product of wreckermania

Gordievsky's time, however, the

much

completed

officially.

in

Even the

KGB could not bring

classified

in-house history

1978 under the direction of the head of the

Second Chief (Counterintelligence) Directorate, Grigori Fyodorovich Grigorenko, maintained, without conviction, that there had been a real conspiracy. 31 In public, at the beginning of the Gorbachev era, the

KGB

was still sticking rigidly to the interpretation of the Shakhty affair given by Stalin in 1928. According to an unclassified official history published in 1979:

It is

undoubted that the wreckers,

who came

spies,

and

diversionists

forth in the late 1920s in a unified anti-Soviet

formation represented a serious threat to the development of socialism and the strengthening of the defensive might of our nation.

The exposure of

OGPU

organs, including special sections, helped the Party

and government

this hostile

underground by the

to thwart the anti-Soviet plans of interna-

tional reaction. 32

—

In 1928 this conspiracy theory was taken seriously very probably even by most of the OGPU officers who manufactured the evidence at the Shakhty trial. Stalin's Russia suffered from a variant of the spy fever that had swept much of Europe during the First World War. During the first weeks of the war "many thousand" suspected German spies were reported to the London police. Not one proved genuine. Spy

mania, wrote the head of the Metropolitan Special Branch, Basil

Thom-

"assumed a virulent epidemic form accompanied by delusions which defied treatment." For the remainder of the war some ministers and a section of public opinion suffered from the recurrent delusion that

son,

industrial unrest

and other hindrances to the war

effort

were the

result

of subversive conspiracies funded by the enemy. In a celebrated case for criminal

libel in

1918 the jury was persuaded that the

service possessed a "black

book"

listing

German

secret

47,000 British sexual perverts,

Stalin

mostly effort.

in

high places,

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

who were

119

being blackmailed to sabotage the war

33

Spy mania returned at the beginning of the Second World War. fall of France and the Low Countries to the Germans,

In 1940, after the Britain

much

Home is

was swept by

column" of enemy subversives not World War. A

fears of a "fifth

extravagant than the spy mania of the First

less

Intelligence report in June concluded: "Fifth

Column

hysteria

reaching dangerous proportions." For a time even Winston Churchill

and

his chiefs of staff believed that "the

most ruthless action" was

34 required to root out what was in reality an almost nonexistent menace.

The wartime fifth

columns,

delusions in the Western democracies about large

like the

Communists McCarthy, make it

nary

in

Cold the

War

witch hunt against frequently imagi-

United

States

led

by

Senator

Joseph

easier to understand the origins of the Stalinist

obsession with anti-Soviet subversion at a time

under simultaneous threat from class enemies

at

when the regime felt home and imperialists

abroad. But the Stalinist witch hunt was different both in kind and in scale

from anything experienced

in the

West. Churchill's alarmism at

menace of a fifth column in 1940 was short lived. By the end of the year he had concluded that "witch-finding activities" were counterproductive. The American administration during the Cold War was one of the targets rather than one of the instigators of McCarthy's witch the

hunts.

By

Union was West the persecution of imaginary spies and subversives during the two world wars and of imaginary Communists during the Cold War produced only a handful of fatalities. In the Soviet Union during the 1930s imaginary enemies of the people were liquidated in the millions. Stalin and his supporters used the imaginary contrast, the witchfinder-general in the Soviet

Stalin himself. In the

conspiracy revealed at the Shakhty

trial to call for

an end to the

NEP

era of tolerance to bourgeois interests and the beginning of a determined assault ists in

on the

class

enemies wrecking the economy, bourgeois special-

industry and kulaks (better-off peasants) in the countryside.

Having disposed of the Left Opposition, propriate

its

Stalin felt free to ap-

radical policies for a dramatic socialist transformation of

the Soviet economy. Bukharin and the Right Opposition, less radical policies

who

based on conciliation rather than class

favored conflict,

were swept aside even more easily than the Left. In January 1929 Bukharin lost his place on the Politburo. High among the reasons that impelled the Stalinist leadership to embark during the next year on a

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

120

crash program of industrialization under the First Five- Year Plan and

compulsory collectivization in the countryside designed "to liquidate the kulaks as a class" was a chronic sense of insecurity at the combined

menace of class enemies within and imperialist foes abroad. In a speech Committee in November 1928 Stalin insisted that the survival of socialism in one country depended on the ability of the Soviet economy to overtake the West: "Either we do it, or we shall be crushed." He repeated the same warning in February 1931:

to the Central

One

feature in the history of old Russia

was the continual

beatings she suffered because of her backwardness. fifty

We

must catch up

or

The

we go

Stalinist

.

.

.

We

or a hundred years behind the advanced countries.

are

under.

this distance in ten years. Either

we do

it

35

transformation of the Soviet economy was born in ideal-

ism as well as in insecurity. The prospect of a great leap forward into a fully socialist militants

much

economy kindled among the new generation of Party the same messianic fervor that had inspired Lenin's

followers in 1917. Fifty years later, the dissident Soviet general Petro

Grigorenko

still

recalled "the enthusiasm

Communists

other young

and passion" of himself and "The Year of the

as Stalin hailed 1929 as

Great Change":

Bread was

in dreadfully short supply, there

were queues,

rationing and famine were just around the corner,

were carried away by

Stalin's [message]

and

and yet we

rejoiced: "Yes,

a great change indeed, the liquidation of peasant small-hold-

from which capitalism might re-emerge. Let the sharks of imperialism just try to

ings, the destruction of the very soil

attack us now.

Now we

are on the high road to the triumph

of socialism." 36

Many

of Trotsky's Russian supporters were

nomic

vision.

won over by Stalin's ecoYuri Pyatakov, president of the State Bank and a former

close associate of Trotsky, declared in an impassioned speech to the

Council of People's Commissars in October 1929: "The heroic period of our socialist construction has arrived." 37

But

if

the "heroic period" of socialist construction galvanized

the enthusiasm of

many

Party militants,

it

also required the coercive

Stalin

power of the

OGPU.

In

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

November 1929

of over three years, whether

OGPU, whose

were trans-

network of labor

vast

(gulag) rapidly developed during the 1930s into a major source

The mixture of visionary

of forced labor for the Soviet economy.

ism and brute force during the Soviet industrial economy. tic

prisoners serving sentences

for political offenses or not,

ferred to the jurisdiction of the

camps

all

121

production targets

first

ideal-

Five- Year Plan transformed the

More was accomplished by

in the conviction that there

which Bolshevism cannot storm" than

realistic

but

setting unrealis-

were "no citadels less inspiring esti-

mates could ever have achieved. Great new industrial centers were created in the Urals, Kuzbass, and the Volga, the cities of Magnitogorsk

and Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur rose from the virgin ogy was taken to remote areas

in

soil;

new

technol-

Kazakhstan and the Caucasus, the

dam was constructed, and And all this was achieved in

mighty Dnieper

the output of electricity

almost trebled.

the early 1930s at a time

when

the depression in the

July 1929 was at

its

West sparked by the Wall Street Crash of spokesmen confidently contrasted the

nadir. Soviet

successes of socialist construction with the insoluble contradictions of international capitalism. 38

The depression

did not, in Soviet eyes,

make

capitalism less

dangerous. Stalin warned in June 1930:

Every time that

capitalist contradictions begin to

the bourgeoisie turns say:

"Cannot we

ism, or

all

its

grow acute

gaze towards the U.S.S.R. as

settle this or that contradiction

if

to

of capital-

the contradictions taken together, at the expense

of the U.S.S.R., the land of the Soviets, the citadel of the revolution,

working

which by its very existence is revolutionizing the ?" Hence the tendency to and the colonies

class

.

.

.

adventurist assaults on the U.S.S.R. and to intervention, a

tendency which developing

is

found to be strengthened as a

result of the

crisis.

With the Conservative 1929, the return of

defeat in the British general election of June

Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour government,

and the resumption of Anglo-Soviet diplomatic relations, Britain ceased to be the chief menace. The main threat of war, said Stalin, now came from France, "the most aggressive and militarist country of all aggressive and militarist countries." 39 Soviet fear of attack was heightened by a French campaign against Russian "dumping" on Western markets.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

122

Commerce and Industry oron Soviet imports and tried to persuade France's allies in Eastern Europe to follow suit. The Soviet Union retaliated with a total ban on French imports and public warnings at the aggressive 40 designs of French imperialism. The French plan, claimed Vyacheslav Molotov, chairman of Sovnarkom and future commissar for foreign In October 1930 the French Ministry of

dered restrictions

was "to organize an economic blockade of the U.S.S.R." as a

affairs,

preparation for an armed attack. 41

The renewed

threat of foreign aggression intensified the hunt

for internal saboteurs in league with foreign, especially French, imperialists.

On September 22,

1930, the press

announced that the

OGPU had

uncovered a "counterrevolutionary society" of forty-eight professors, agronomists, and food administrators, headed by Professor Alexander

Ryazantsev,

who were

accused of a plot to sabotage the country's food

supply. Next day the papers were filled with editorials

and workers'

resolutions calling for the counterrevolutionary conspirators to be executed.

On

had been

September 24 shot,

it

was announced that

all

and extracts were published of

forty-eight villains

their confessions to

mostly imaginary crimes. At hundreds of workers' meetings, according to the Soviet press, "the proletariat fervently

OGPU,

in liquidating this dastardly plot."

OGPU

thanked the glorious

the unsheathed sword of the revolution, for

its

splendid

work

42

Behind almost every shortage and major industrial accident the uncovered further "dastardly plots." The most remarkable

imaginary conspiracy uncovered during the

first

Five- Year Plan

was

that of an

underground "Industrial Party" comprising two thousand engineers and official planners who for some time had been planning the overthrow of the Soviet regime. They were in collaboration with the general staffs of a dozen nations, led by the French, the leading French

statesmen

Raymond

Poincare and Aristide Briand, assorted foreign

Lawrence of Arabia and the oil magnate Sir Henry Deterding, and a White Russian provisional government in Paris (two of whose members turned out to be dead), waiting to return to Russia and restore capitalism. 43 The opening of the show trial of the Industrial Party's eight-man executive committee amid the faded splendors of the former Nobles' Club was accompanied by a gigantic parade of more than half a million factory and office workers tramping through the snow to chants of "Death! Death! Death!" A warning was issued celebrities, including

during the

trial

that bands of imperialist agents might at any time

Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

123

attempt to rescue the accused and unleash a massive campaign of sabotage. But after an eloquent appeal by the aging

Maxim Gorky

to

the workers, peasants, and intellectuals of the entire world, the agents failed to materialize

averted.

and the imaginary threat of foreign war was

44

Haifa century

after the trial the

KGB

still

absurdly maintained

had been a genuine "underground espionage directed and financed by Western secret agents, as well as

that the Industrial Party

centre

by

.

.

.

.

.

.

former major Russian capitalists located

in Paris."

45

Gordievsky

KGB who took this nonsense seriously. It is tempting to conclude that the OGPU attitude to the trial was as cynical in 1930 as that of the KGB fifty years later, and that the whole Industrial knew no one

in the

was a deliberate deception from beginning to end. The truth The OGPU had no doubt discovered disaffected engineers and officials who despised the Soviet regime and had links of various kinds with the vast White Russian diaspora abroad. But the Party is

affair

not so simple.

OGPU's

incurable addiction to conspiracy theory convinced

was dealing with

imperialist agents its

it

a highly organized counterrevolutionary plot in

must necessarily have a

collective imagination in scripting

that

it

which

part. It then felt free to use

and staging a dramatic recon-

struction of the conspiracy for the edification of the Soviet people, their friends in the

Communist

International,

and other progressive forces

abroad.

Most of the evidence required for these Stalinist morality plays was provided by the confessions of the "conspirators." In 1967 one of the victims of the early

show

trials

gave this written deposition to the

procurator of the Soviet Union, explaining

how the OGPU obtained the

confessions:

Some who tried .

.

.

yielded to the promise of future benefits. Others, to resist,

were "made to see reason" by physical

methods. They were beaten

—on the

face

and head, on the

sexual organs; they were thrown to the floor and kicked,

choked until no blood flowed to the head, and so on. They were kept on the konveier without sleep, put in the kartser (half-dressed

and barefoot

hot and stuffy

cell

in a cold cell, or in

an unbearably

without windows), and so on. For some,

the mere threat of such methods, with an appropriate onstration,

was enough. 46

dem-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

124

Very few indeed of those for whose

show

edification the

trials

were

intended had serious doubts about them. Even the Trotskyists, despite their

own

persecution by the

OGPU,

had no doubt about the

reality of

the Industrial Party conspiracy. Trotsky insisted that "specialist wreckers"

had been "hired by foreign imperialists and emigre Russian comAn underground Trotskyist in Moscow saw the workers'

pradores."

anger

at the "specialist

wreckers" as encouraging evidence of their

A

"genuine revolutionary enthusiasm." Factory

in

Moscow

condemning the

tion of the workers

memory

for life."

The

at the Red Proletarian "The anger and indigna-

worker

recalled forty years later:

traitors' acts

have remained

in

my

47

Industrial Party trial ended, unexpectedly, in anticlimax.

Five death sentences were delivered by the judges to cheers and a storm of applause in the courtroom. Then, two days

ment.

Some were

later,

it

had been commuted to ten

that the death sentences

surreptitiously rehabilitated.

48

was announced

years' imprison-

The reasons

for the

change of heart were economic. Despite the training of a new generation of proletarian technocrats, the rapid progress of the

first

Five- Year

Plan had revealed industry's continuing dependence on the

skills

of

"bourgeois specialists."

At

a

zhonikidze,

conference

of managers

who had become head

approach" toward

who

'specialist baiting' as a

"maximum

the old school

Sergo Ord-

trial,

Economic

emphasized the need for "a

who "work honestly." During number of cases of exiled and imprisoned

requested rehabilitation. Stalin himself hypocritically

declared in June 1931:

for

1931

specialists

spring the council reviewed a

engineers

in

of the Supreme National

Council during the Industrial Party careful

early

"We

have always regarded and

still

regard

harmful and disgraceful phenomenon"; he called

care for those specialists, engineers and technicians of

who

are definitely turning to the side of the working Menzhinsky underlined the wisdom of Stalin's speech in a rare article in Pravda, emphasizing that Dzerzhinsky had made frequent use of the OGPU "to protect specialists from all kinds of oppression." 49 The moratorium on "specialist baiting" did not end wrecker mania. Stalin and many in the OGPU remained convinced that part of class."

the counterrevolutionary conspiracy hatched by domestic traitors and foreign enemies involved a long-term plan to sabotage the Soviet econ-

omy. In March 1933

six British electrical engineers

Metropolitan-Vickers

Company on

together with a larger

number of Russian wreckers on charges of sabo-

working for the

projects in Russia were arrested

Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

Though some of the

tage and espionage.

125

British engineers

had obtained

what the Metro-Vic managing director described as "general informa-

economy (probably of a kind

tion" on the Soviet

that

would have been

freely available in the West), the sabotage was, as usual, imaginary.

now

the routine of the

show

trial in

the former Nobles' Club

The Russian defendants duly confessed

established.

their

By

was well

imaginary

crimes:

them watched for the flick of Prosecutor Vyshinsky's whip and obeyed with the frightened alacrity of trained animals. In their "last words" they begged for their lives and promised to do penance in the tones and the words that had become a familiar refrain since the Shakhty trial. All of

The British engineers played their parts less professionally. Two had made elaborate pretrial "confessions" to the OGPU, but both withdrew them (one only temporarily) during the proceedings. Another defendant made the unprecedented claim in open court that the trial was "a frame-up

.

.

.

based on evidence of terrorized prisoners." All but one

of the Russians were given prison sentences. So were two of the Metro-

Vic engineers. The British government retaliated with a trade embargo,

which was

As

July 1933

lifted in

well as leading the

when

the engineers were released.

campaign against

50

industrial saboteurs, the

OGPU also spearheaded the drive to collectivize agriculture during the First Five- Year Plan.

months of forced

The most spectacular achievement of

collectivization

was what

the early

Stalin described as "the

liquidation of the kulaks as a class." Since kulaks were "the

sworn

enemies of the collective farm movement," their removal from their

farms was a precondition of collectivization. The term "kulak" was applied not simply to the better-off peasants but to any peasants however poor

—

for example, devout churchgoers

collectivization.

families

began

The

first

mass

arrests

late in 1929. All

were

by the shot.

—suspected of opposing

OGPU of heads of kulak

Then, early

in 1930,

whole

kulak families were rounded up by the thousands, marched to railway stations, placed

on

and

left

wilderness, if

cattle cars, transported to the Arctic or Siberian

to fend for themselves.

The Politburo did not

care

they lived or died.

This operation ants

—was too large

—eventually involving perhaps ten million peas-

for the

OGPU to run by itself;

25,000 young Party

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

126

militants, hastily trained at two- week courses five

thousanders"

—

—the so-called "twenty-

were drafted into the countryside to help evacuate

The young militants Red Guards in the Chi-

the kulaks and set up kolkhozes (collective farms).

showed much the same

ruthless fervor as the

nese Cultural Revolution a generation

later,

convinced that they were

dealing with class enemies engaged in a counterrevolutionary conspir-

One

acy to prevent the victory of socialism.

of the "twenty-five thou-

sanders," Lev Kopelev, later wrote: "I was convinced that soldiers

on an

we were

waging war on kulak saboteurs

invisible front,

for the

sake of bread that the country needed for the Five- Year Plan." 51 But for

some veteran

OGPU officers the suffering and the horror of forcing

millions of peasants from their

Deutscher found one

OGPU

homes was too much

to bear. Isaac

colonel broken by his recent experiences

in the countryside:

"I

am an

old Bolshevik," he said, almost sobbing. "I

against the Tsar all

and then

that in order that

I

fought in the

should

I

machine-guns and order

worked I do

war. Did

civil

now surround

villages with

my men to fire indiscriminately into

crowds of peasants? Oh, no, no!" 52

By

March 1930

the beginning of

the twenty-five thousanders had

herded over half the peasants into kolkhozes and reduced the countryside to chaos. Stalin

was forced

to call a halt in order to allow the spring

sowing to proceed. After the publication in Pravda on March 2 of his article "Dizzy with Success" hypocritically reproaching the militants for not observing the "voluntary principle," the population of the kolk-

hozes

fell

by over

half.

Once

the harvest

was

safely gathered in, forced

collectivization resumed.

The mayhem of

collectivization,

lower agricultural

yields,

sharply increased state procurements, drought and crop failure in 1932

combined

to

produce

in

1932-33 the most

terrible

famine

in the history

many

as seven mil-

of twentieth-century Europe, in which perhaps as lion died.

recalled

A Party activist in the Ukraine, the center of the famine, later

how:

In the terrible spring of 1933 ger. I

I saw people dying from hunsaw women and children with distended bellies, turn-

ing blue,

corpses

still

breathing but with vacant,

—corpses

in

lifeless eyes.

And

ragged sheepskin coats and cheap

felt

Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

127

snow of the

boots; corpses in peasant-hunts, in the melting

old Vologda, under the bridges of Kharkov.

But he did not lose

I

his faith:

persuaded myself, explained to myself that

in to debilitating pity.

We

I

were performing our revolutionary duty.

convinced that

I

mustn't give

We were realizing historical necessity. .

.

For

.

I

was

was accomplishing the great and necessary

transformation of the countryside, that their distress and suffering

were a

result of their ignorance or the

machinations

of the class enemy. 53

Throughout the Ukrainian famine the OGPU continued to uncover cases of sabotage by "class enemies" and "counterrevolutionary conspirators":

among them

veterinarians accused of decimating livestock,

the entire staff of the Meteorological Office charged with falsifying

weather forecasts,

civil

servants alleged to have

infested seed corn with weeds,

and

collective

damaged

failed to fulfill impossible quotas. Stanislas Kossior, the

secretary (himself later shot in the Great Terror),

"Whole counterrevolutionary

nests were

tractors

farm chairmen

formed

and

who had

Ukrainian

first

announced that

in the People's

Com-

missariats of Education, of Agriculture, of Justice; in the Ukrainian Institute of

chenko

Marxism-Leninism, the Agricultural Academy, the Shev-

Institute, etc."

54

The OGPU's continuing

ability to discover

imaginary rural

saboteurs helped to sustain the gigantic conspiracy theory that increas-

dominated

ingly

Stalin's

world view. Lazar Kaganovich, one of Stalin's

most trusted henchmen and one of the few Politburo members to survive the purges, claimed that kulaks who had survived the deportations, along with White Guards and other counterrevolutionaries, had succeeded in "sabotaging the collection of grain deliveries and sowing."

When

the novelist Mikhail Sholokhov wrote to Stalin in April 1933 to

complain of "the mortal blow delivered to the collective farm econ-

omy"

in the

Don

growers of your

district,

district

Stalin replied that "the

esteemed grain-

(and not only of your district)" had tried to

sabotage the bread supply to the towns and

Red Army:

That the sabotage was quiet and outwardly harmless (without bloodshed) does not change the fact that the esteemed

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

128

grain-growers waged what was virtually a "silent" war against Soviet power.

Sholokhov.

A

war of

starvation, dear

Comrade

55

Despite the preposterous nature of the allegations of sabotage by starving peasants,

impossible to dismiss

it is

them simply as a cynical attempt from the crimes and blunders

to provide scapegoats to divert attention

of the Party leadership. Like the witch finders of an earlier age, Stalin believed his

them

own

conspiracy theories, even

to suit his political purposes.

saboteurs, the

The

if

he

felt free

to

embroider

Apart from finding nonexistent rural

OGPU served two other main functions during the fam-

was to seal off the starving Ukraine from the outside was allowed into the Ukraine. No Ukrainians without special passes were allowed out. The last railway station between Kiev and the Ukrainian-Russian border was occupied by an armed OGPU detachment, which turned back all passengers without permits. Within the Ukraine the OGPU also had to deal with some of the most horrific consequences of the famine. Cannibalism became commonplace, but since cannibals were not covered by the criminal code, they were handed over to the jurisdiction of the OGPU. 56 ine.

first

No

world.

grain

The

OGPU

also helped to prevent

crossing the borders

it

had

One

sealed.

was

"active measures" of the 1930s

news of the famine from

of the most successful Soviet

to persuade

most of the outside

world, as well as gullible Western visitors and journalists actually in the Soviet Union, that one of the worst famines in

more than

Ukraine, spent in tours,

modern

history

was no

a piece of anti-Soviet propaganda. After five days in the official receptions,

Edouard Herriot, the French

banquets, and carefully conducted

radical leader, twice prime minister

of his country, "categorically denied the

about a famine

in the Soviet

lies

of the bourgeois press

Union." After a tour of Potemkin

villages,

Bernard Shaw announced: "I did not see a single under-nourished person in Russia, young or old.

Were

they padded?

Were

their hollow

cheeks distended by pieces of india rubber inside?" The

Times correspondent litzer

in

New

York

Moscow, Walter Duranty, awarded the Pu-

Prize in 1932 for his "dispassionate, interpretive reporting of the

news from Russia," claimed famine

Russia

in

August 1933 that "any report of a

today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda." The gurus of British Fabian socialism, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, in

is

reached the same conclusion after their tours of Russia in 1932 and 1933.

They blamed

the "partial failure of crops" in certain areas on "a

Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

129

population manifestly guilty of sabotage," and castigated peasants

who

"out of spite" had taken to "rubbing the grain from the ear, or even cutting off the whole ear, and carrying

shameless theft of

The

inevitable consequence of the

it

off for individual hoarding,

property." 57

communal

this

man-made famine

and the savage witch hunts against "class enemies,"

in the

countryside

real or

imagined,

in both town and country was the brutalization of the Soviet Communist Party in general and of the OGPU in particular. "Terror," wrote Bukharin, "was henceforth a normal method of administration, and obedience to any order from above a high virtue." But enough of the original idealism of the Bolshevik revolutionary dream remained for the depravities of the class war to provoke at least a muted protest. The most articulate protest was a letter drafted by a supporter of Bukharin, Mikhail Ryutin, signed by himself and seventeen others, which was circulated to members of the Central Committee on the eve of a meeting of its plenum in autumn 1932. The text of the "Ryutin platform," made public only in 1989, contained such a forthright attack on Stalin and the brutality of the past few years that some Trotskyists who saw the letter wrongly concluded 59 that it was an OGPU provocation. It denounced Stalin as "the evil genius of the Russian Revolution who, activated by vindictiveness and lust for power, has brought the revolution to the edge of the abyss," and 5

demanded

his removal: "It

to tolerate

any longer

is

*1

shameful for proletarian revolutionaries

Stalin's yoke, his arbitrariness, his scorn for the

Party and the laboring masses." 60

The impact of the Ryutin platform on

Stalin

was heightened by

simultaneous evidence of the stirring of the remnants of Trotsky's supporters. In October 1932 the Soviet official and former Trotskyist

Goltsman met Trotsky's son, Sedov, in Berlin, and handed him document entitled "The Economic Situation of the Soviet Union," which was published anonymously in the following month's issue of the Trotskyist Biulletin Oppozitsii. Goltsman also E. S.

a harshly critical

brought a proposal for the formation of a united opposition bloc within the Soviet Union. All that remained by scattered,

now

of the Left Opposition was

demoralized, and increasingly powerless remnants.

Trotsky, not for the

last time,

overestimated the strength of his

But

own me

support in the Soviet Union. "The proposition of the bloc seems to

completely acceptable," he wrote to his son. 61 Stalin had an even more exaggerated view of the Trotskyite menace in the Soviet Union than

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

130

Trotsky himself.

When

in

1936 he accused his political police of being

"four years behind" in "unmasking the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc,*'

mind what he saw as its feebleness in stamping down on both Ryutin platform and Trotsky's supporters in 1932. 62 Stalin was not yet ready to begin the manhunt for the exiled

he had the

in

Trotsky. But he appears to have called for Ryutin's immediate execution.

Despite

OGPU support,

he was voted

down by

a majority on the

Politburo, apparently headed by the Leningrad Party boss, Sergei

The eighteen

Kirov.

signatories of the

Ryutin platform were, however,

expelled from the Party on the nonsensical charge of having attempted to set

up a bourgeois, kulak organization

in particular, the

ground

activity

kulak system in the U.S.S.R. by means of under-

under the fraudulent banner of "Marxism-Leninism."

Zinoviev and Kamenev,

now mere symbols

were also expelled for

sition,

to reestablish capitalism and,

failing to

rather than leaders of oppo-

inform on Ryutin's "counterrev-

olutionary group." 63

At a joint session of the Central Committee and Central ConCommission in January 1933 Stalin argued the case for intensifying the "class struggle": "We must bear in mind that the growth in the power of the Soviet state will intensify the resistance of the last remtrol

nants of the dying classes." Characteristically, he blamed the famine

and other economic problems on sabotage by these "dying classes," some of whom had "even managed to worm their way into the Party."

Once

again, however, Stalin encountered opposition. Central

tee secretary Postyshev

Commit-

argued that there was no longer any point in

using the kulaks as scapegoats for the problems of running large collective farms:

"By shouting

that kulaks, wreckers, officers, Petlyurists

[Ukrainian nationalists] and other such elements disrupt the harvest or sabotage grain-collection,

we

don't change the situation." So

many

speakers criticized the Party's agrarian policy that, for the last time in his

life,

Stalin virtually admitted

said, "to

blame."

A

he had made mistakes.

"We

are," he

Party journal cited his speech as an example of

"Bolshevik self-criticism." 64

Two divergent trends were now apparent within the Party leadership. Stalin

of the

and

OGPU

his lieutenants

were anxious to unleash the

full

force

against the forces of counterrevolution. Others were

anxious to restore "socialist legality." For a time Stalin thought it unwise to resist that trend openly. In May 1933 he accepted the circulation of a secret "instruction," condemning mass repression in the countryside.

A

month

later the office

of procurator of the U.S.S.R. was

Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

established, with the evident

same time the for the

first

OGPU excesses. Yet at the

aim of limiting

Stalin cult steadily expanded.

tions in 1933 the ceremonial address

At the May Day

Moscow

celebra-

by Marshal Voroshilov referred

time to Stalin as "Leader" (Vozhd).

the October Revolution in

131

On

the anniversary of

Stalin's portraits

outnumbered

65 Lenin's by almost two to one.

Opposition to Stalin resurfaced at the Seventeenth Party Con-

nowadays stated as a fact in the Soviet Union polled almost three hundred votes less than Kirov in the

gress early in 1934.

that Stalin

It is

elections to the Central

Committee. Stalin

lost his title

"general secre-

66 tary" and was referred to simply as "secretary." Party opposition to

however, was so muted that the vast majority of the Russian

Stalin,

population were unaware of its existence. Even today

it

do much more than guess opposition in 1934 was the growing extravagance of the sible to

though

at its

Stalin's

extent.

remains impos-

Far more

visible

than

Stalin cult.

And

domination of the Party was not absolute, his control

of the means of repression continued to increase. In

by

May

1934 the invalid Menzhinsky died and was succeeded

his first deputy,

Yagoda, who for some time had been acting head

was transformed into the GUGB (Main Administration of State Security) and integrated into a reconstituted NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), headed by Yagoda. The political police, regular police, criminal investigation, border troops, internal troops, and, from October 1934, the entire penal system, were thus combined in one body. Though technically only a part of it, the political police was usually referred to as the NKVD. The whole immensely powerful force answered directly to Stalin himself. 67

of the

OGPU.

In July the

OGPU

NKVD

ran through his own personal secretarheaded by A. Poskrebyshev. 68 According to the defector Aleksandr Orlov, Poskrebyshev and Georgi Malenkov headed a "Little Stalin's direct line to the

NKVD

iat

Council," which evaluated Stalin's secretariat also

incoming intelligence for the Politburo. 69

provided the training ground for his protege,

1936 was to succeed Yagoda at the head of the and preside over the Great Terror. 70 The assassination on December 1, 1934, of Kirov, Stalin's main

Nikolai Yezhov,

NKVD

who

all

in

potential rival, led to a further increase in

shot in the back of the neck as he

NKVD powers.

left his office in

Kirov was

the Leningrad Party

headquarters. His deranged assassin, Leonid Nikolayev, imagined himself the successor to the populist assassins of

Tsar Alexander

II.

Re-

markably, Nikolayev had twice previously been caught by Kirov's

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

132

guards approaching him with a loaded revolver in his briefcase, but on each occasion had been released by the Leningrad

NKVD.

Fifty years

no one in the KGB with whom Gordievsky discussed the assassination doubted that the order for Kirov's murder derived from Stalin himself. But it was generally believed that Stalin had bypassed Yagoda, whom he did not fully trust, and had worked instead through the head later

NKVD, Filipp Medved, and his deputy I. ZaporoKhrushchev later concluded, probably incorrectly, that Yagoda was also involved and had received verbal orders from Stalin. of the Leningrad zhets.

71

On

his arrival at

one of the most

Leningrad after Kirov's murder, Stalin gave

brilliant acting

performances of his career.

He

struck

Medved, who had come to meet him at the railway station, with his gloved hand and then appeared overcome with grief on seeing Kirov's corpse. Officially Medved and Zaporozhets were sacked for criminal negligence, but both subsequently reemerged working for the NKVD in the Far East before being shot during the Great Terror in 1937, possibly, as Khrushchev later suggested, "to cover up all the traces of the organizers of Kirov's assassination." 72

A summary ists.

directive

on the evening of Kirov's assassination authorized

action, including the death penalty, against suspected terror-

According to Khrushchev, the directive was issued "without the

approval of the Politburo" on the initiative of Stalin. 73 The acquired, and retained for twenty years, the

those Soviet citizens

found by the

it

NKVD thus

power of life and death over

chose to label "terrorists." The

first

scapegoats

NKVD for Kirov's murder were an alleged conspiracy of

White Guards who had infiltrated Russia across the Polish, Finnish, and Latvian frontiers. One hundred four of the imaginary conspirators were allegedly rounded up and shot. 74 Three weeks after Kirov's death another nonexistent conspiracy was uncovered.

On December 22,

1934,

was announced that Nikolayev belong to an underground terrorist organization set up by the followers of Zinoviev. Stalin noted in his own hand the names of two groups of guilty Zinovievites, who were chris-

it

tened the

"Moscow Center" and

the "Leningrad Center."

It

was

fur-

ther disclosed that Nikolayev had received 5,000 rubles from the Lat-

who provided an alleged between the Zinovievite conspirators and the exiled Trotsky. On December 30 it was announced that, after a brief trial without defense lawyers, the conspirators had been shot. In January 1935 Zinoviev and Kamenev featured in the first vian consul-general (subsequently expelled), link

Stalin

political trial of

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

133

former opposition leaders. Both acknowledged only a

vaguely worded political responsibility for Kirov's murder, which short of actual instigation, and were sentenced five years'

to, respectively,

ten

fell

and

imprisonment. Bizarre though these proceedings were, the

Soviet people

had become so used

cies that they

found them quite plausible. 75 After the

moned Yagoda and

told

him,

to revelations of plots

and conspira-

trial Stalin

sum-

"You're working badly, Genrikh

Grigoryevich!" Zinoviev and Kamenev, he insisted, should have been

made a full confession. Yagoda was so shaken by when he recounted it to his deputy Georgi Prokoviev

tortured until they the meeting that

he burst into

tears.

76

During 1935 sive onslaught

Stalin laid the foundations for a

on actual or potential opposition to

1933 and continued during 1934, had

at rooting out

corruption and inefficiency. In 1935

became both more murder of Comrade Kirov,"

the purge

sinister

and more

said Stalin later,

political.

result of detailed inquisition, since, in the

"lying, political Jesuitry 77

evil

removed as the

words of a Party spokesman,

and double-dealing are the basic

Every

"The

had revealed "many

suspect elements within the Party." These could only be

Party's enemies."

A

in

purge of Party members, begun been aimed chiefly

much more mashis leadership.

local Party organization

tactics of the

began a campaign of

confession and self-criticism. "Big, packed halls," writes Evgenia Ginsburg, "were turned into confessionals":

Every meeting had

its

soupe du jour. People repented for

incorrect understanding of the theory of tion

and

for abstention in the vote

permanent revolu-

on the opposition platform

of 1932; for an "eruption" of great-power chauvinism and for

undervaluation of the second Five- Year Plan; for acquaintance with certain "sinners" and for infatuation with Meyerhold's theatre. 78

became increasingly obsessed with one great opponent beyond Leon Trotsky. One of the standard questions put by NKVD interrogators while taking political confessions was: "Do you agree or do you not that Trotsky is the chief of the vanguard of bourgeois counterrevolution?" Most of those expelled from the Party were branded as Trotskyites and Zinovievists. To Trotsky in his lonely exile this was vastly encouraging news. He wrote in January 1936: Stalin

his reach,

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

134

Among

the 10 to 20,000 "Trotskyites" expelled in the last

months there are no more than a few

perhaps a few

tens,

hundreds ... of men of the older generation, oppositionists

The mass

of the 1923-8 vintages.

...

is

made up

of new recruits.

can be said with confidence that in spite of thirteen

It

years of baiting, slander and persecution, unsurpassed in

wickedness and savagery, in spite of capitulations and defections,

more dangerous than

persecution, the [Trotskyist]

Fourth International possesses already today

most numerous, and most hardened branch

Both

Stalin

and Trotsky now inhabited,

its

strongest,

in the U.S.S.R.

at least intermittently, a

79

world

of make-believe in which each fed the other's fantasies. Stalin's belief in

mostly nonexistent Russian Trotskyists infected Trotsky, whose

pleasure at discovering these imaginary followers in turn persuaded

menace was even worse than he had supposed. Trotskyists had disappeared from view within the Soviet Union was simply that, with very few exceptions, they had in fact disappeared. Stalin and most of the NKVD, however, Stalin that the Trotskyist

The

real reason

why

believed that their apparent disappearance merely demonstrated that

they had gone underground, often posing deceitfully as loyal party

members. In the summer of 1936 a tion,

passed on Stalin's

ers to destroy all

sent in the alone,

name

warned

all

initiative,

secret Central

gave the

Committee

resolu-

NKVD extraordinary pow-

"enemies of the people." 80 In July a secret circular, of the Politburo but possibly authorized by Stalin

Party organizations:

Now that it has been demonstrated that Trotskyist-Zinovievite

monsters are uniting

in a struggle against Soviet

power

all

the most embittered and sworn enemies of the toilers of our

country

—

kulaks,

etc.;

spies,

now

provocateurs, that

all

saboteurs,

White Guards,

distinctions have been erased be-

tween these elements on the one hand and the Trotskyists and Zinovievites on the other all our Party organizations,

—

members of the Party, must understand that the vigilance of Communists is required in any sector and in every situation. The inalienable quality of every Bolshevik in current conditions must be to know how to discover an enemy of the all

Party,

however well he

is

disguised.

Stalin

A

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

135

campaign over the next few weeks revealed that, "thanks to corrupt liberalism and a blunting of vigilance on the part of some Communists," there were still "Trotskyist-Zinovievite degenerates" in press

Party ranks. 81

The trial of the main "degenerates" opened on August 19. Kamenev, and their associates now confessed what they had

Zinoviev,

been allowed to deny

in

January 1935: that they were the "direct

organizers" of Kirov's assassination and had intended his murder as the

Communist leaders, including means of overthrowing the Soviet regime. Since 1932 they had acted on (nonexistent) instructions from Trotsky, con-

prelude to the assassination of other Stalin himself, as a

veyed through (equally nonexistent) secret agents.

One

of the accused

described a meeting with Trotsky's son at a hotel in Copenhagen that

turned out to have been pulled

imaginary crimes rorist

all

the

down twenty

members of

years earlier. For such

the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Ter-

Center" were sentenced to death. Their public confessions

marked an important stage in the elaboration of a vast conspiracy theory, which in its final form fused together all the opponents of Stalinism, both at home and abroad, into one stupendous plot. The trial identified the remnants of the Left Opposition inside Russia not merely with the exiled Trotsky but also with the White Guards and fascism. The "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center," it was revealed, "sank definitively into the swamp of white-guardism," merged with it, and "became the organizing force of the last remnants of the exploiting classes which had been routed in the U.S.S.R." They had also collaborated with the Gestapo, with whom Trotsky had agreed on a joint terrorist campaign against the Soviet regime. In his final plea Zinoviev defined the relationship between his own supporters and the forces of Nazism and international fascism in an elegantly simple, if improbable, formula: "Trotskyism is a variety of fascism and Zinovievism

is

a variety of Trotskyism." 82

To

Stalin's satisfaction, the trial also implicated the

of the "Right Opposition": Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky.

remnants

Tomsky

took the hint and committed suicide. But while Stalin was on his annual holiday at Sochi in mid-September, he received the unwelcome news that

Bukharin and Rykov had been cleared

tion. All Stalin's old suspicions

Basking

in his recent

in the

an

NKVD investiga-

about Yagoda welled to the surface. 83

promotion to the rank of General Commissar of

State Security (the equivalent of marshal)

ment

after

and the award of an apart-

Kremlin, Yagoda overestimated the strength of his posi-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

136

tion,

gave free rein to his growing vanity, and ordered public changing

of the

NKVD On

guard with neo-Tsarist music and ceremonial. 84

September 25 nemesis arrived

and

the Politburo from Stalin

his protege

form of a telegram to

in the

Andrei Zhdanov demanding

Yagoda's replacement by Nikolai Yezhov: "Yagoda has

definitely

proved himself to be incapable of unmasking the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc.

The

OGPU is four years behind in this matter": a clear reference

to the allegedly

weak response

to the "counterrevolutionary"

Ryutin

platform and Trotskyite menace of 1932. 85 Stalin probably already intended to launch a

NKVD

but decided for the

moment

to lull

its

Yagoda and

sense of security by removing only

major purge of the

leadership into a false his

deputy Georgi

Prokoviev. For the time being, neither was executed or imprisoned.

commissar and deputy commissar

Instead, they became, respectively,

of Communications. Yagoda's successor, the diminutive, boyish-looking Yezhov,

was the

first

ethnic Russian to head the

KGB. As secretary

of the Central Committee and head of the Party Control Commission,

Yezhov had been in effect supervising the NKVD on Stalin's behalf for some time. Within the Party apparatus he had created a security staff parallel to the NKVD itself; this staff had probably planned Kirov's assassination, also at Stalin's behest.

Yezhov had taken part

in the preparations for the trial of the

"Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center," even setting up an office in

Lubyanka and taking part in the interrogations as Party representative in charge of security. He showed particular interest in the methods used to extract confessions from those prisoners who put up most resistance and would always ask the interrogators "what, in their opinion, was the last straw that broke the prisoner's back." Yezhov took personal pride in reducing one tough Old Bolshevik to tears by threat-

the

ening his children.

One

Yezhov's triumph said a villain as Yezhov.

of the

later:

He

does

welcomed Yezhov's presence

NKVD my

"In it

life I

who

witnessed

have never seen such

with pleasure." Yagoda cannot have

in the

dulled by the honors heaped on

interrogators

whole

Lubyanka, but

him

in 1936, his

his suspicions

were

growing vanity, and

the expectation of a place in the Politburo. 86

Under Yezhov

all

the restraints that had hindered the liquida-

tion of Stalin's imaginary enemies

usually Soviet

known Union

in the

West

were removed. The next two years,

remembered in the The next show trial, in January

as the Great Terror, are

as the Yezhovshchina.

1937, featured Pyatakov, Radek,

and

fifteen

other imaginary traitors.

Stalin

It

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

137

purported to reveal that, in addition to the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite

Terrorist Center"

had

unmasked

show

at the

trial in

also established a "reserve center,"

August 1936, Trotsky

known

as the "Anti-Soviet

"reserve center" was found guilty of conspiring with

The second "enemy of the

people L. Trotsky" and "certain representatives of

Germany and

Trotsky ite Center," in case the

first

center was discovered.

and to restore power of the bourgeoisie by means of wrecking, diversion, espionage, and terrorist activities designed to undermine the economic and military power of the Soviet Union, to expedite the armed attack on the U.S.S.R., to assist foreign aggressors and to bring

Japan" "to overthrow the Soviet power

in the U.S.S.R.

capitalism and the

about the defeat of the U.S.S.R."

The Nazi regime and a

much

its

intelligence service played, in absentia,

greater part in the case against the "Anti-Soviet Trotskyite

Center" than in the previous show

appeared for the

first

trial.

The Japanese government

time as a major conspirator. Trotsky,

claimed, had promised the Ukraine to

Provinces and the in

Germany and

it

also

was

the Maritime

Amur region to Japan as a reward for their assistance

overthrowing the Soviet regime. The "Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Cen-

ter"

had regularly supplied both the German and Japanese

intelligence

services with secret intelligence "of the utmost state importance,"

preparations for even

more

extensive wartime sabotage, including bac-

teriological warfare "with the object of

army On March

canteens and

contaminating troop

trains,

centers with highly virulent bacilli." 87 18,

1937,

Yezhov revealed an even more

dimension of the imaginary counterrevolutionary conspiracy ing in the

had

made

organized widespread peacetime sabotage on their behalf, and

NKVD officers' club.

By

startling

at a

meet-

the time his apprehensive audience

assembled, some of Yagoda's leading department chiefs were already in prison,

having been sent on train journeys ostensibly to carry out

regional inspections, only to be arrested at the

first

railway station

Moscow. The conspiracy, explained Yezhov, had penetrated the very heart of the NKVD. The chief traitor was Yagoda himself. After working for the Okhrana, Yagoda had been recruited by the German secret service and used by them to penetrate the Cheka. By the time of his dismissal, he had planted spies in every key position in the NKVD, some of whom were already under arrest. Yezhov's audience applauded a speech that most of them knew outside

to be rubbish.

According to Walter Krivitsky, a senior

defected later in the year:

INO officer who

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

138

They applauded

A

Who knows? them from a bullet Perhaps they might once more

to demonstrate their devotion.

timely confession might yet save

through the base of the brain.

buy the

right to live

by betraying their closest

friends.

was Artuzov, who saw an opportunity to Slutsky, who had replaced him as head of INO in 1934. Artuzov began by confessing their collective "blindness" in failing to discover Yagoda's treachery, and allowing him "to set the OGPU against the Party." He gave as an example OGPU support for Yagoda's attempts to freeze out Stalin's protege Akulov in 1932: "I must say frankly the entire Party organization in the OGPU was devoted to sabotaging Akulov." Then Artuzov moved to the offensive: "I ask you who was head of the Party Organization in the OGPU at that

The

first

to take the floor

revenge himself on

time?"

He

Abram

paused for dramatic

effect,

then shouted, "Slutsky!" 88

Slutsky was caught off guard and stumbled at to defend himself.

Then he discovered a promising

first

as he tried

line of counter-

attack:

I

ask you, Artuzov, where did you live?

Who

lived opposite

And is he not now among the first batch arrested? And who lived just above you, Artuzov? Ostrovsky? He too is arrested. And who lived just beneath you, Artuzov? Yagoda! And now I ask you, comrades, who, you? Bulanov?

under prevailing conditions, could have lived in the same house with Yagoda without enjoying his absolute confidence? 89

Artuzov was soon arrested and shot. So, within the next year, were most of Yagoda's department heads. 90 The main exception was Slutsky,

who was spared for a time so that INO officers serving abroad who were Moscow in the mistaken

selected for liquidation could be lured back to belief that their

department was to be spared. By February 1938 he had

He was invited to the office of Yezhov's deputy, Mikhail Frinovsky, given tea and cakes, and expired on the spot, al-

outlived his usefulness.

legedly from a heart attack. Experienced

NKVD officers who attended

Slutsky's lying-in-state are reported to have noticed

on his face the produced by hydrocyanic acid. An official obituary "comrades in work," described Slutsky as a "fearless

characteristic spots

signed by his

fighter for the cause of the

working

class

.

.

.

Chekists

knew

his

name

Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

to the ends of our broad fatherland.

139

Enemies feared that name." 91

Unlike his predecessors, Trilisser and Artuzov, however, Slutsky's pordoes not appear on the wall of the

trait

The next

FCD Memory

Room. 92

great imaginary conspiracy to be uncovered by Ye-

On

zhov involved the Red Army.

Marshal Tukhachevsky, hero of the

June Civil

11

it

was announced

War and

that

the Soviet Union's

leading military thinker, had been arrested with seven other generals,

on a charge of treason. All were

shot, probably the next day.

Marshal

Voroshilov reported that the traitors had "admitted their treacherousness,

wrecking and espionage." They had,

it

was

later revealed,

been

with both Trotsky and Nazi Germany. Preposterous though

in league

these allegations were, Stalin and

Yezhov were possessed by such para-

noid fears of counterrevolutionary conspiracy that they seem genuinely to

have feared a military coup. Frinovsky, Yezhov's second-in-com-

mand, told Krivitsky: "We've just uncovered a gigantic conspiracy in the Army, such a conspiracy as history has never known. And we've just

now

learned of a plot to

kill

Nikolai Ivanovich [Yezhov] himself!

We've got everything under control." 93 The deputy head of INO, Mikhail Shpigelglas, gave much the same version But we've got them

all.

of events to another future defector, Aleksandr Orlov:

That was a

real conspiracy!

That could be seen from the

panic which spread there on the top:

Kremlin were suddenly declared held in a state of alarm. Soviet

As Frinovsky

Government hung by a

act as in

normal times

In this case

we had

—

first

thread.

the

trial

to shoot first

the passes to the

all

invalid;

It

our troops were

"The whole was impossible to said:

and then the shooting.

and

try later."

94

It later emerged that the Gestapo had tried to exploit Stalin's paranoia by planting forged documents in Czechoslovakia that appeared to show a plot by Tukhachevsky to carry out a coup d'etat with German sup-

port.

The Gestapo

plot,

however, was unnecessary. Stalin had decided

to liquidate the imaginary military plot even before his attention

Germans,

it

was brought

to

by President Benes of Czechoslovakia. Unprompted by the

Stalin

and Yezhov decimated the Red

Army

high

command

with a thoroughness that must have exceeded the Gestapo's wildest hopes. 95

be

The total number of victims of the Yezhovshchina may never known with certainty. In response to a secret request from the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

140

Politburo in 1956, the

KGB

produced a figure of about 19 million

arrests for the period 1935 to 1940, of

or died in the gulag.

The

whom at least 7 million were shot

real death toll

was probably higher

still.

96

By

a macabre irony, the most dangerous "enemies of the people" were

who

discovered in the three institutions

shared responsibility for de-

Red Army, and the members of the Central Commit-

fending the Soviet state against them: the Party, the

NKVD. One hundred

ten of the 139

1934 Party Congress were shot or imprisoned. Only

tee elected at the

59 of the 1,966 delegates reappeared at the next Congress in 1939.

members of the Supreme Military Council were Red Army officer corps, probably well over men, were executed or imprisoned. The NKVD hierarchy was 35,000

Seventy-five of the 80 shot.

More than

half the

1 8 of Yagoda's commissars of state security, grades and 2, were shot (save for Slutsky, who was probably poisoned) under Yezhov. Of Yezhov's top 122 officers in 1937-38, only 21 still held

purged twice. All 1

office

under his successor

in 1940.

97

The Yezhovshchina destroyed most

of what remained of the idealism of the early Chekist leadership, con-

new

and hand the change in NKVD interrogators was the writer Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the persecuted poet Osip Mandelstam: vinced that their brutality was necessary to build a

One

defeat counterrevolution.

The

first

who

witnessed at

society

first

generation of young Chekists, later to be removed

and destroyed tastes

of those

in 1937,

and weakness

able, of course. In

[Osip] that

it

yourself told

was distinguished by

for literature

my

was useful

me

its

sophisticated

—only the most

fashion-

presence Christophorovich said to for a poet to experience fear

so") because

he would "experience fear

it

("you

can inspire verse, and that

in full

measure."

Mandelstam died in a labor camp. Christophorovich, the interrogator, was shot. 98 His successors were men of little culture and less idealism. Within the

NKVD,

as within the Party, the conditions of the Terror

led to the survival of the morally unfittest, those

themselves by denouncing others. The teams of stationed around the gulag ing

when

commonly became

most willing

NKVD

alcoholics.

to save

executioners

Each morn-

they collected their automatics from the guardroom they were

each given a glass of vodka. Then they loaded the day's victims onto trucks, drove

them

them up and

started shooting:

to a pit

dug by a team of criminal

convicts, lined

Stalin

Some were

[silent],

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

141

others started crying out that they were

good Communists, that they were dying innocent, and so on. But the In

some

and

women

places

tried to see

only cried and huddled closer together.

NKVD

marksmen lined up the how many they could kill with a

prisoners sideways single bullet.

Then

the execution squads returned to camp, put their automatics back in the guardroom, were given as

and

much

free

vodka as they could drink,

slept."

The

victims of the

A

NKVD included foreign as well as Russian

officials and foreign ComMoscow were unmasked as "enemy agents" or "foreign spies" and shot. Those who were most vulnerable were the members of illegal Communist parties and their families, who had lost

Communists.

majority of the Comintern

munists resident

in

the protection of foreign nationality. foreign

jails,

where,

it

was

Most had spent some time in had

alleged, that capitalist secret services

them as agents. The two illegal foreign parties with the largest number of imaginary spies among their exiled leadership were the Poles and the Yugoslavs. The Polish Communists were most suspect of all: recruited

their leaders

were Jewish and had taken Trotsky's side

at the

time of

Lenin's death. All were shot. Manuilsky told the 1939 Soviet Party

Congress:

In order to disrupt the

Communist movement,

Trotskyite spies attempted to form

artificial

the Fascist-

"factions" and

some of the Communist parties and to stir up Most contaminated by hostile elements was the Communist Party of Poland, where agents of Polish fascism managed to gain positions of leadership. "groups"

in

a factional struggle.

Stalin

was almost

whose

first

Yugoslav Communist Party, Sima Markovic, had challenged his views on the nationality question in 1925. Ironically, the only leading Yugoslav as suspicious of the

leader,

Communist whom

Stalin trusted

was the arch-heretic of the postwar

Soviet bloc, Josip Broz, alias Tito,

In 1938,

when

I

was

in

who

later recalled:

Moscow ... we were

discussing

whether to dissolve the Yugoslav Communist Party. All the

Yugoslav leaders

at that

time in the Soviet Union had been

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

142

was alone, the party was weakened, without and I was there alone. 100

arrested; ership;

The

I

lead-

of the extent of the imaginary international coun-

final revelation

came in February members of the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites," chief among them Bukharin, Rykov, and Yagoda, accused of an expanded version of what had become the usual terrevolutionary conspiracy against Stalinist Russia

1938 with the show

trial

of twenty-one

catalogue of Trotskyite crimes: espionage, wrecking, terrorism, and preparations for foreign invasion, the dismemberment of the U.S.S.R., the overthrow of the Soviet system, and the restoration of capitalism.

Previously the Trotskyites had been allegedly conspiring only with the

German and Japanese

secret services;

now

they were accused of work-

ing for British and Polish intelligence as well. Trotsky himself

revealed as a

Yagoda had

German

some time been "surrounded

for

was

agent since 1921 and a British agent since 1926. as with

flies

with German,

Japanese and Polish spies."

The

last

show

trial

had disclosed that Trotsky and the assorted

counterrevolutionaries under his leadership had promised the Ukraine to

Germany and

russia to

the Maritime Provinces and

Amur

region to Japan.

was revealed that they had also promised ByeloPoland and Uzbekistan to Britain. Trotskyite terrorism too

In February 1938

it

turned out to be even more devious and extensive than previously supposed. Not content with assisting in Kirov's assassination,

Yagoda

had pioneered "wrecking methods of medicine" and arranged the poisoning of his predecessor Menzhinsky, the great writer Maxim Gorky, and the chairman of the State Planning Commission V. V. Kuybyshev. He had also begun to poison Yezhov himself but had been caught in the nick of time. 101

The most important novelty at the trial of the

in the conspiracy theory unveiled

"Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites" was the height-

ened emphasis given to the role of Western governments and their intelligence services. ies

The

Trotskyites were no longer the mere auxiliar-

of foreign secret services but their "slaves,"

masters."

The

state procurator,

"bondmen of

peroration:

The "Block of grouping; services.

it is

Rightists

their

Andrei Vyshinsky, declared during

and Trotskyites"

is

no

political

a gang of spies, of agents of foreign intelligence

This has been proved fully and incontestably.

his

Stalin

Herein

lies

the

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

enormous

nificance of the present

Ever since the Shakhty

trial

social, political

143

and

historical sig-

trial.

ten years before, the role of foreign intelli-

gence services in plotting the overthrow of the Soviet system had

loomed final

steadily larger in Stalinist

and

NKVD conspiracy theory.

The

version of that conspiracy theory backdated the dominant role

played by "the devilish work of the foreign intelligence services" in

all

counterrevolutionary activity to the origins of the Soviet state:

The

entire history of bourgeois counterrevolution in the

U.S.S.R.

is

linked up with the active attempts of the most

reactionary circles of the international bourgeoisie to over-

throw the power of the

more

Soviets.

There has not been a single

power

or less serious plot against the Soviet

in the

U.S.S.R. without the direct and most active participation of foreign capitalists

Among

those

who

and military

attended the

cliques.

trial

102

of the "Bloc of Rightists and

Trotskyites" was Sir Fitzroy Maclean, then a young British diplomat at the

Moscow

maneuvered arc

embassy. At one point during the light illuminated a private

courtroom and Maclean saw, to

box

trial

at the

his astonishment, the

tache and yellowish complexion of Stalin himself. 103

a clumsily

back of the

drooping mus-

Though

not, of course, supervise every detail of the Terror or even

names of most of

Stalin did

know

the

was nonetheless the directing hand. Gordievsky's father and other KGB veterans told him how from the death of Kirov onward Stalin used to receive late each evening first Yagoda, then Yezhov. The nightly meetings with Yezhov not uncommonly lasted from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. 104 Stalin took an obsessional perits

victims, his

sonal interest not merely in the persecution of the major figures in the

NKVD, and armed services, but also in the numbers of more humble "enemies of the people" being unmasked. His most trusted Party,

subordinates, such as Lazar Kaganovich, toured the provinces to

make

sure that local quotas for such "unmaskings" were being fulfilled or overfulfilled.

While the Great Terror was at its height Stalin was never with the numbers reported to him. The head of the militia in the Ivanovo region, Mikhail Shreider, later recalled one such visit of inspection by Kaganovich in 1937. Throughout his stay Kaganovich

satisfied

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

144

telephoned Stalin several times a day to report on the numbers of

NKVD

was already using what Shreider from imaginary enemies of the people, after each phone call Kaganovich insisted on speedier confessions. On one occasion Kaganovich phoned Stalin in Shreider's presence to report the latest number of arrests. Stalin, as usual, was dissatisfied, and Shreider heard Kaganovich repeating over and over

Though

arrests.

the local

called "severe tortures" to extract confessions

again:

"Will do, comrade Stalin. I'll press on the NKVD department heads not to be too liberal and to increase to the maxi-

mum

identification of

enemies of the people." 105

"Enemies of the people" with foreign connections were likely to have were spies as well. Many years later Gordievsky still

to confess that they

in the KGB archives. One fairly memory early in his career was the German Communist named Sturm, who had wandered half

occasionally

file

came

across their

example that lodged

typical

on a

files

in his

starved from the Ukraine to the Volga in 1937.

up

in

Kuybyshev begging

wearily confessed to being a

The Terror

The

NKVD picked him

for bread. After a few interrogations, he

German

spy and was shot. 106

inevitably acquired a

momentum

of

its

,

own. The

requirement that imaginary "enemies of the people" identify their equally imaginary collaborators, as well as the that surrounded their friends

and

1937-38 something approaching a geometrical progression.

arrests in

The prime mover of the Terror and it

more general suspicion

relatives, built into the pattern of

as pervasive as possible, however,

any compunction

was necessary

in allowing the

to give the

show

the

was

man most

concerned to make

Stalin himself. Stalin never

had

manufacture of whatever evidence

trials

the

maximum dramatic effect. But

both he and Yezhov undoubtedly believed in the vast conspiracy theory

on which the

trials

were based. Underlying the preposterous claims of

a combined assault by imperialist secret services and their Trotskyite hirelings

was an impeccable Leninist

during the fied his

trial

conspiracy theory in Lenin's

We

logic.

In an open letter published

of the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites," Stalin justi-

own

words:

are living not only in a State, but in a system of States,

and the existence of the Soviet Republic imperialist States

is

in the long

side

by side with

run unthinkable. In the end

Stalin

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

one or the other

either

will

145

triumph. But until that end

comes, a series of the most terrible clashes between the Soviet

Republic and bourgeois States

remember

that

we

unavoidable.

is

.

.

We

.

must

are always within a hairsbreadth of

invasion.

It

was, claimed Stalin,

"absurd and stupid" to suppose that the

would not attack whenever they saw a

U.S.S.R.'s external enemies

favorable opportunity: "This could only be thought by blind braggarts or concealed enemies of the people." lin's

107

Those who disagreed with

Sta-

conspiratorial world view were thus identified as "enemies of the

people." Starting from Leninist premises,

it

was impossible

for the

imperialists not to attempt the overthrow of the world's only worker-

peasant

state.

And

if

they were plotting

its

overthrow,

it

conceivable that their intelligence services were not hard at to subvert

To denounce

it.

acy theory

As

it

the basis,

was necessary

if

to attack

was barely work trying

not the detail, of Stalin's conspir-

Leninism

itself.

Lenin's reaction to the "Lockhart plot" twenty years earlier

had shown,

his

manichean vision of a world divided between bourgeois

darkness and Bolshevik light rendered him continuously susceptible to

A

collection of

twentieth

anniversary

attacks of conspiracy theory.

mark "the

NKVD"

in

glorious

documents published of the

to

Cheka-OGPU-

December 1937 quoted Lenin's own warnings

against the

counterrevolutionaries' "organized treachery in our rear," "sabotage of

food production which threatens millions of people with starvation,"

and "extensive organization for espionage." Lenin called for "urgent measures" to uncover the "countless conspiracies" hatched by an unholy alliance of White Russian emigres and foreign imperialists:

"We

have no answer other than the answer of an organization [the Cheka]

which knows the conspirator's every step and which would not try to reason but would punish immediately." 108 But Lenin would never have succumbed to the wilder excesses of Stalinist wrecker mania and spy fever.

He

described

it

as "laughable to say that foreigners

who

will

be

assigned to administer certain trade concessions are dangerous or that

we

will not

be able to keep an eye on them." 109 Almost

at the Stalinist

show

trials

all

the charges

would have been inconceivable

in Lenin's

lifetime.

Stalin's

Russia was more susceptible to conspiracy theory than

Lenin's for two reasons. First, twenty years of socialism in one country

and

capitalist encirclement

had bred an acute sense of insecurity. The

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

146

early hopes of exporting the Revolution abroad

had given way to a

preoccupation with the problems of defending the Revolution at home.

"Help from the international proletariat," said Stalin of February 1938, "must be combined with our work

in his

open

letter

to strengthen the

Red Army and Navy,

defenses of our country, to strengthen the

to

mobilize the entire country for the fight against military attack and against attempts to restore bourgeois relations."

110

The spy mania of the Stalin years also derived from what Khrushchev called Stalin's own "sickly suspicious" personality. "Everywhere and in everything he saw 'enemies,' 'two-facers' and

m The widow of Aleksandr ("Sasha") Kosarev, secretary of Komsomol, later recalled her husband's final meeting with Stalin at a 'spies.'

"

Kremlin banquet: Stalin not only clinked his glass but

him. Returning to his

me

"Let's go

home."

He

replied:

so upset.

When we left, I "When Stalin kissed me, he

ear, 'If you're a traitor,

you.'

I'll kill

Kosarev was shot a few months gist

embraced and kissed and agitated, said to asked him why he was

seat, Sasha, pale

later.

112

said in

my

"

The

greatest Soviet psycholo-

of the interwar period, Vladimir Bechterev, concluded as early as

1927 that Stalin was a paranoid schizophrenic, and appears to have paid with his

life

for his diagnosis.

A

conference of leading Soviet psychia-

113 Unlike 1989, however, rejected that diagnosis as too simple.

trists in

truly paranoid personalities Stalin retained a capacity for cool,

ous, calculation

and an

instinctive sense of timing.

But

it is

if

devi-

difficult

not

to detect at least a paranoid strain in Stalin's "sickly suspicious" personality.

Yezhov inhabited the same

conspiratorial universe as Stalin

himself. In private as well as in public he insisted that foreign intelli-

gence services had mounted "a

enemies of all

NKVD

filthy network of intrigue in which had combined as one." 114 He told a meeting of senior that there were bound to be "some innocent victims"

flags

officers

in "the fight against fascist agents": "Better than ten innocent people

should suffer than one spy get away." 115 Yezhov lived in continual fear of assassination from traitors within the

NKVD.

heavily guarded office in the Lubyanka, even

In order to reach his

NKVD

officers

had

to

take the elevator to the fifth floor, walk through a series of long corridors, go

down

a staircase to the

first floor,

walk along more corridors,

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

Stalin

and take another elevator

to

147

Yezhov's secretariat on the third

floor.

Their papers were checked at frequent intervals along the circuitous route.

116

Yezhov may

well have believed, as

was alleged

at the trial of

Yagoda had

the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites," that

tried to

poison him. Stalin too took elaborate precautions against poison plots.

He had

a female servant

whose

sole function

was

to

make

tea

from

sealed packets kept in a locked cabinet opened only in the presence of

an

NKVD security guard. One day the guard discovered a broken seal

maker was carted off to the Lubyanka. 117 Most of the Soviet population accepted the official doctrine that they were threatened by a major conspiracy of spies and wreckers in the pay of foreign secret services. At every factory NKVD officers

and the

tea

lectured workers on the danger from imperialist agents in their midst.

Almost every

Many

of spies.

NKVD,

film,

comedies included, contained

its

obligatory quota

of the imaginary spies and wreckers apprehended by the

particularly at the beginning of the Yezhovshchina, believed

that though they themselves were the victim of

some

terrible

mistake

("If only Stalin knew!"), other enemies of the people were guilty as

charged. Old inhabitants of the gulag became so used to hearing this

complaint from new arrivals that they accused them

same gramophone

record.

118

all

of playing the

Even those who grasped the bogus nature

of the show-trial confessions

commonly

believed that the defendants

were "objectively guilty." Party militants often took every word literally. Evgenia Ginsburg records that a woman she knew exclaimed when the

NKVD "So he

came

to arrest her

lied to

husband

me? So he was

in 1937:

really against the Party all the

time."

With an amused

grin the agent said: "Better get his things

together."

But she refused to do this for an enemy of the Party, and when her husband went to his sleeping child's cot to kiss him good-bye she barred his way.

"My

child has

no father." 119

Such simple-minded fanaticism

many

is

less baffling

than the credulity of

The American ambassador JoDepartment that the show trials had

well-educated foreign observers.

seph Davies reported to the State provided "proof

.

.

.

beyond reasonable doubt to

justify the verdict of

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

148

guilty of treason."

The award-winning New York Times correspondent

Walter Duranty concluded that "The future historian

will

probably

accept the Stalinist version." Sir Bernard Pares, then Britain's best-

known Russian

historian,

found the verbatim reports of the show

trials

"The plea that Stalin acted first to disrupt a potential fifth by no means unwarranted." The Webbs thought the defendants were "behaving naturally and sensibly, as Englishmen would were they not virtually compelled by their highly artificial legal system to go through a routine which is useful to the accused only when there is some doubt as to the facts or as to the guilt or innocence of the conduct in question." 120 Such gullibility did not die with Stalin. "impressive":

column ...

is

For many

in the

NKVD

who

survived the Terror or were

recruited to replace their liquidated predecessors, the primary

numbed

simply to survive. Their minds

aim was

or brutalized by their work,

they preferred not to reflect deeply on the purpose of the horrors they

were perpetrating. Most, however, accepted the

reality of the

imaginary

conspiracy they were fighting. Mikhail Gorokhov, an engineer joined the

NKVD

1938, found

in

most of the new

who

recruits "Party

members, simple boys, who have been told that 'enemies of the Socialist society' try to wreck our Soviet system and kill our leaders and that these wreckers

must be exterminated." Early in their training he and watched impassively the torture of a peasant, believ-

his fellow recruits

ing

it

essential to

defector Viktor

uncover his part in the conspiracy. 121 The future

Kravchenko was

NKVD that the Terror had been

told

by an old childhood friend

in the

"absolutely necessary ... to free the

country from traitors and spies": "If you

fell

into our hands,

it

certainly

wouldn't be without reason." 122

The

old guard in the

helps to explain

why

so

NKVD

many

were

less naive.

That, no doubt,

of them were liquidated. But even the

survivors of the Dzerzhinsky era

became confused about the reality of The widow

the "spies" and "wreckers" they were ordered to unmask.

of the murdered

NKVD defector Ignace Poretsky (alias Ignace Reiss)

remembered Abram Slutsky, head of INO from 1934 to 1938, as "a likeable and mild-mannered man" who did his best to save some of the victims of the Terror. But:

many contradictions. We knew of when he interceded courageously to save

Slutsky was a person of cases, after 1936,

someone from

arrest,

interrogation of

and he would weep while

some of

telling of the

the defendants at the trials and

Stalin

bemoan

and Spy Mania (1926-38)

the fate of their families; yet in the

149

same breath he

could denounce them as 'Trotskyite fascists." 123

The

Stalinist

witch hunt against spies and wreckers faced Slutsky and

most who thought

They knew cent.

that

like

him

in the

NKVD with an insoluble dilemma.

most of the victims of the Yezhovshchina were inno-

But as good Leninists they were bound to accept that Soviet

Russia was menaced with a permanent conspiracy by world capitalism,

whose

secret services

were necessarily seeking to subvert

it.

In reality

the only dangerous anti-Soviet conspiracies organized by foreign

gence services during the 1930s were the attempts by

Japan to exploit the paranoia of Stalin and the

intelli-

Germany and

NKVD by encouraging

more imaginary conspiracies. The intelligence service that did most damage in prewar Russia was the NKVD itself. Slutsky and the old guard in INO, though they grasped some of what was going on, could do little about it. They were intellectually as well them

as

to believe in yet

physically

was no escape.

trapped by their ideology inside a confrom which, without renouncing Leninism, there

powerless:

spiratorial universe

5 "Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

The

secret history of the

KGB

First Chief Directorate, prepared in

1980 to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of INO, records that until the early 1930s the

OGPU's main

foreign target

remained the White Guard movement centered on the headquarters of the

ROVS

(Russian Combined Services Union) in Paris.

priority of the

OGPU

1

The

chief

residency established in Paris at the beginning

of 1925, following French diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union,

was the surveillance against, the

of,

and the development of "active measures"

ROVS. The ROVS was an increasingly soft target.

head,

Its

General Kutepov, calculated that though 90 percent of the White Russian diaspora of about

two million remained "healthy

remaining 10 percent had become disillusioned. figures,

On

patriots," the

Kutepov's

own

30,000 of the 300,000 White Russians in France, demoralized

by homesickness, the privations of exile, and concern for relatives Soviet Union, had become possible targets for the OGPU. But, despite the lesson of the Trust,

in the

Kutepov was curiously

naive about the danger of Soviet penetration of his entourage. There

were

OGPU

agents even within the White

among them Admiral Krylov, who seems

career in the Soviet navy; General Monkevitz,

150

Guard high command,

to have

hoped

to

resume

his

who staged a fake suicide

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

151

November 1926 to conceal his flight to the Soviet Union; and Kute2 pov's own former chief of staff during the Civil War, General Steifon. in

OGPU penetration was used not merely for intelligence gatherWhite Russian community. The revewas arranged so as to cause maximum

ing but also for destabilizing the lation of the Trust deception

damage

to

Kutepov's

credibility.

Grand Duke Nicholas,

the Tsar's

cousin, confessed to his intimates his "profound disappointment" with

Kutepov. General Wrangel urged him to abandon

all

attempts to orga-

nize a secret anti-Bolshevik conspiracy within the Soviet Union. But

Kutepov was not

to be dissuaded. Despite his humiliation at the

of the Trust, his naivete continued to agents provocateurs.

He

make him

told the former

easy prey for

hands

OGPU

White General Denikin

in

November 1929: "Great movements are spreading across Russia. Never have so many people come from over there to see me and ask me to collaborate with their clandestine organizations." At Kutepov's request, his former chief of staff Steifon made at least two secret trips to Russia to meet the imaginary conspirators, and returned

full

of OGPU-

3

which he transmitted to Kutepov. Kutepov was a tragicomic figure. Though known

inspired optimism,

ers as "the iron general,"

he more closely

fits

to his admir-

the description once

applied to the last Tsarist commander-in-chief, General Kornilov: "a

with the heart of a lion and the brains of a sheep." The OGPU would have been well advised to allow him to remain in Paris, alternately deceiving and discrediting him to add to the demoralization of the White Russian diaspora. But neither the Cheka nor any of its successors has ever found it possible to take a sober and objective view

man

of the real strength of counterrevolutionary forces. In the Stalin era the

was wildly exaggerated. Even Kutepov was perceived as such a potential menace at the head of the ROVS that he had to be liquidated. Since, unlike Savinkov and significance of all forms of counterrevolution

Reilly,

he refused to be lured back to the Soviet Union, the

arranged to kidnap him instead. The decision to do so was

OGPU

made on

the

orders of Stalin himself. 4

The

OGPU

officer sent

from Moscow to organize Kutepov's

kidnap, Sergei Puzitsky, had taken part in both the Sindikat and Trust deceptions.

The kidnap took

morning of Sunday, January

place shortly before eleven o'clock on the 26, 1930, in the

in the seventh arrondissement.

The

middle of a Paris

who told him that two from the Soviet Union of the anti-Bolshevik under-

Kutepov's former chief of staff, General Steifon, representatives

street

trap seems to have been sprung by

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

152

ground

(in reality the

a leading

OGPU

OGPU

illegal,

resident in Paris, Nikolai

Kuzmin, and

Andrei Fikhner) needed to see him urgently

and were waiting in a taxi. The OGPU was also assisted by a Communist Paris policeman so that if any bystander saw Kutepov being bundled into a taxi (which one did), the kidnap would be mistaken for a police arrest (which

it

was).

Early in the afternoon of January 26 Steifon called at Kutepov's flat

and asked

to see the general.

failed to return

from a memorial

On

being told by his wife that he had

service, Steifon successfully dissuaded

her from calling the police for several hours by

first

possible explanations for the general's absence

and then suggesting

offering various

White Russian community. Meanwhile the car containing Kutepov was speeding with an escort toward the Channel coast. Eyewitnesses, later interviewed by the Surete, saw him being bundled on board a Soviet steamer. The kidnap, however, went wrong. The combination of the anesthetic used to overpower Kutepov and the general's weak heart proved fatal. He died from a heart attack a hundred miles from the Soviet port of Novorossilsk. The OGPU interrogation of Kutepov, designed to lay bare the remaining secrets of White inquiries within the

Guard

conspiracies against the Soviet regime, thus never took place. 5

Soon

after

emigre general

Kutepov's abduction, the

in Paris, Nikolai Skoblin,

division in the Civil

Nadezhda had been

War. 6 Skoblin's

Plevitskaya, popularly

in

touch with the

wife, the

known

OGPU

OGPU

for

recruited another

former commander of a White

homesick emigre singer

as the

some

"Kursk

nightingale,"

years. In the

mid- 1920s

she had sought permission to return to the Soviet Union. Dzerzhinsky

She was, he believed, potentially too valuable among the

refused.

emigres. In the weeks following the kidnap General Skoblin and Nadezhda Plevitskaya called almost daily on Kutepov's wife to offer sympathy and seek the latest news on the investigation into his disappearance. "Skoblin still

alive,"

and

his wife

always used to

Madame Kutepov

prise at their certainty, Plevitskaya told

confirmed

it."

and

me that my husband was "When I expressed sur-

me she had had a dream which

Plevitskaya's skill in dissembling,

ability to tug at

Russia,

tell

later recalled.

combined with her

emigre heart strings by her rendering of "Ah, Mother

You Are Covered Deep

ballads, gave both her

Russian communities

all

in Snow" and other sentimental songs and Skoblin the ability to penetrate White

over Europe. 7

For many years the

OGPU

and

its

successors indignantly dis-

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

153

claimed any part in Kutepov's kidnap. The truth was finally admitted almost casually in 1965 in a

KGB obituary notice on the kidnap orga-

nizer:

Commissar of

State Security Sergei Vasilyevich Puzitsky

took part in the Civil War, was an ardent Bolshevik-Leninist

and a pupil of F. E. Dzerzhinsky. Not only did he participate in the capture of the bandit Savinkov and in the destruction of

.

.

.

the "Trust," but he carried out a brilliant operation

in the arrest of

Kutepov and a number of White Guard

organizers and inspirers of foreign military intervention in the Civil War.

of the

S.

Kutepov's successor lovich Miller, his

V. Puzitsky was twice awarded the Order

Red Banner and at the

was no

round reddish

received Chekist decorations. 8

head of the ROVS, General Yevgeni Kar-

less naive.

Despite a beard and military mustache,

and cheerful expression gave him a

face, blue eyes,

genial rather than imposing appearance.

dent was to place most of the

One

ROVS funds in

of his

first

acts as presi-

the hands of a confidence

named Ivar Kreuger. By the time Kreuger blew his brains out March 1932, the funds had disappeared. The previous summer, even

trickster in

became known, Denikin had written "The ROVS has sunk into torpor. It no longer

before the Kreuger scandal

morosely to a friend: gives any sign of

The most

mess!"

Shatilov,

life

other than constant internal intrigues.

serious of these internal intrigues

who, without prompting by the

OGPU,

was

led

engaged

A

real

by General in a series

of plots to undermine Miller's authority and challenged two other

White generals to duels. Though both duels were called off, the French government threatened to withdraw his residence permit. In the end Shatilov was allowed to remain but only on condition he stayed strictly out of politics.

He

left

the

ROVS

Thanks

ROVS

influential

like

taxi driver.

to Miller's inept leadership

succeeded in destabilizing

assistance.

The OGPU, however,

OGPU

mole within the

In 1933 Miller put later,

— a number of other Tsarist —took up work as a

and

notables in reduced circumstances

him

in

itself

and Shatilov's

intrigues, the

without the need for

accelerated

ROVS

its

9

decline.

OGPU

The most

remained General Skoblin.

charge of "secret work in Finland."

A year

with the help of Finnish intelligence, Skoblin smuggled two

ROVS

agents across the Finnish-Soviet border. Both were quickly

intercepted by the

NKVD but produced pistols from their pockets and

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

154

made

a remarkable escape back to Finland.

The Finns

refused

all

further cooperation in frontier crossings, strongly hinting that they

possessed intelligence identifying Skoblin as an

him

indignantly defended

agent. Miller

as "a constant victim of intrigues

and vicious

and appointed Skoblin "head of foreign counterespion-

slanderers,"

age."

NKVD

10

In 1934 Miller's financial losses forced

headquarters to

named

less

expensive premises.

Sergei Tretyakov offered

modest

rate.

Unknown

him

to Miller,

him

to

move

the

ROVS

A Russian emigre businessman a ground-floor apartment at a

Tretyakov was an

NKVD

agent

code-named Ivanov. By the time Miller moved into the new ROVS headquarters, it had been fitted with an elaborate set of NKVD listening devices. For the next few years Tretyakov spent several hours a day in rooms immediately above the headquarters, transcribing conversations between Miller and his subordinates. His devotion to duty was commended in an exchange of NKVD telegrams late in 1934: Paris to Center:

We

consider

and devotion seriously

fell

taking

down

necessary to note Ivanov's conscientiousness

it

to his work. ill,

On

the night of

November 23 he

but in spite of his illness he spent

all

day

information, as you can see from the notes.

Center to Paris:

Give Ivanov a grant for medical treatment, in view of his conscientious and devoted work. Decide on the sum yourself, but

it

should not exceed one month's salary. 11

The secret history of the First Chief Directorate concludes that by 1933 Leon Trotsky had replaced Miller and the ROVS as its chief overseas 12

Throughout

and a half years of exile (in Turkey from summer of 1933, in France from the summer of 1933 to the summer of 1935, in Norway from the summer of 1935 until the end of 1936, in Mexico from January 1937 until his assassination in August 1940) Trotsky's entourage, like Miller's, was target.

his eleven

the beginning of 1929 to the

successfully penetrated

of the early

OGPU

by the

OGPU and NKVD. The most successful

penetration agents were the Sobolevicius brothers,

sons of a rich Jewish merchant in Lithuania, later better

known

as Jack

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

155

Soble and Dr. Richard Soblen. For three years from the spring of 1929

among

They had acand cover addresses used by Trotsky to correspond secretly with his supporters in the Soviet Union, and Trotsky entrusted much of the correspondence to them all of it beboth brothers were

Trotsky's closest confidants.

cess to the codes, secret inks,

—

trayed, along with Trotsky's Soviet supporters, to the

Sobolevicius brothers also spent

OGPU,

much

visiting Trotsky's supporters in

reemerged during the Second World States.

OGPU. The

time, again for the benefit of the

France and Germany. Both

War as Soviet

agents in the United

13

The only

difficult

moment

in the penetration

tourage during his Turkish exile occurred in the

OGPU

from one of

learned, probably

Trotsky had received a secret

visit

its

of Trotsky's en-

summer

of 1929.

The

penetration agents, that

from a sympathizer within

OGPU

The sympathizer was Yakov Blyumkin, who as a young LSR in Cheka in 1918 had helped assassinate Count Mirbach, the German

ranks.

the

ambassador,

in defiance of

Dzerzhinsky's orders.

been rehabilitated and had risen to become

He had

OGPU

subsequently

"illegal resident" in

Blyumkin agreed to transmit a message from Trotsky to Radek and, according to the KGB version of events, "discussed methods for setting up illegal contact with the Trotskyite underground in Moscow." Istanbul.

Trilisser did not order

Blyumkin's immediate

arrest. Instead,

probably in consultation with Yagoda, he ordered an attractive agent,

OGPU

Lisa Gorskaya, to "abandon bourgeois prejudices," seduce

Blyumkin, discover the

full

extent of his conspiracy with Trotsky, and

ensure that he returned to Moscow. At the Turkish end, the operation

was handled by the "legal"

OGPU resident, Nahum (Leonid) Aleksan-

drovich Eitingon (then using the alias Nahumov), later to achieve fame within the

KGB

14 as the organizer of Trotsky's assassination.

When

Blyumkin was arrested in Moscow a few weeks later in Gorskaya's company, he realized, too late, that she had been used as an agent provocateur. "Lisa," he said, "you have betrayed me!" Blyumkin became the first Bolshevik to be shot for sympathizing with the opposition. According to Orlov, "He went courageously to his execution, and when the fatal shot was about to be fired, he shouted: 'Long live Trotsky!' " Soon afterward Gorskaya married the OGPU resident in Berlin (and later in Washington), Vasili Mikhailovich Zarubin. 15

Trotsky's Russian supporters dwindled rapidly during his

Turkish

exile.

Convinced

that, as

Trotsky himself had said

in 1924,

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

156

"One cannot be

right against the Party,"

capitulated to the Stalinist

doubtless the

line.

One

16

most of the Left Opposition

report reaching Trotsky (and

OGPU as well) at the end of 1929 put the number of his

supporters in exile and in prison at no

wrote defiantly to a group of Soviet

more than a thousand. Trotsky

disciples:

"Let there remain in exile

not 350 people faithful to their banner, but only 35. Let there remain

even three

—the banner

Western Communist

OGPU

will

remain." Tourists and sympathizers in

parties traveling to the Soviet

Union continued,

between Trotsky and the declining band of Russian faithful. Letters, often from the gulag, written on rough sheets of wrapping paper, sometimes on cigamostly under

rette paper,

surveillance, to act as couriers

hidden or disguised

through to him

in

Turkey

in a variety of ingenious ways, trickled

for several years.

On

one occasion a match-

box arrived on his desk crammed with a complete political thesis penned in minuscule script. Then at the end of 1932, the trickle stopped. 17

Trotsky's Western supporters were never numerous and always

Though

divided.

Trotskyists have an incurable tendency to fragment

("Where there are two

Trotskyists, there are three tendencies"), their

fragmentation during the 1930s was cleverly accelerated and embittered by

ceeded

OGPU

agents provocateurs.

in playing off the

The

Sobolevicius brothers suc-

prominent Austrian Trotskyist Kurt Landau

against Trotsky himself with such success that

from the movement. Another

OGPU

Trotsky's confidence, Henri Lacroix, suddenly

moralizing claim in tion gets

March 1933

no support and

is

Landau was expelled

agent provocateur

the de-

that in Spain "the [Trotskyist] Opposi-

neither

known nor

understood, while the

support of the workers goes to the U.S.S.R. and to general,

who won

came out with

Communism

embodied in the Spanish Communist Party." 18 On any objective assessment, Stalin should have found the

in

evi-

him by the OGPU, of dwindling support and internal bickering within the penetrated Trotskyist movement deeply reassuring. But Stalin was incapable of objective assessment. Trotsky became an obsession that dominated many of his waking hours and interfered with sleep at night. Isaac Deutscher concludes: dence, regularly reported to

The

frenzy with which [Stalin] pursued the feud, making

the paramount preoccupation of international as well as of the Soviet

it

communism

Union and subordinating to it all and other interests, beggars

political, tactical, intellectual

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

description: there

is

in the

157

whole of history hardly another

immense resources of power and propaganda were employed against a single individual. 19

case in which such

Had

would be was obsessed was a

Stalin been pursuing the real Trotsky, his obsession

But the Trotsky with

inexplicable.

whom

Stalin

mythical figure constructed by Stalin's "sickly suspicious" imagination,

who

bore increasingly

As

little

resemblance to the Trotsky

whom

he had

menace of the mythical Trotsky loomed ever power and influence of the real Trotsky steadily declined. Trotsky could not even find a secure European headquarters from which to rally Communist opposition. He left Turkey in search of a new base in November 1932 but was compelled to return four weeks later, having failed to find any government willing to allow him more than a transit visa. He was eventually allowed to move to France in the summer of 1933 but was not permitted to live in Paris, was subjected to a series of restrictions and finally expelled in the summer of 1935. From France Trotsky moved to Norway, where his political activity was once again restricted, before he was expelled, this sent into exile.

the

larger in Stalin's mind, so the

time to Mexico, at the end of 1936. 20

The

chief organizer of the Trotskyite

movement

for

most of the

who left Turkey two years later after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. It was Sedov who, until his death in 1938, organized publication of the Bulletin of the Opposition (Biulletin Op21 pozitsii) and maintained contact with Trotsky's scattered followers. Sedov's entourage, like his father's, was penetrated by the OGPU and the NKVD. From 1934 until his death his closest confidant and collaborator was an NKVD agent, the Russian-born anthropologist Mark Zborowski {alias Etienne), who helped him publish the Bulletin and try 1930s was not Trotsky himself but his son, Lev Sedov,

for Berlin in 1931

and moved

to Paris

what opposition remained in Russia. Sedov him the key to his letter collect his mail, and kept Trotsky's most confiden-

to keep in contact with

trusted Zborowski so completely that he gave

him to and archives

box, allowed tial files

in his house.

22

Under Menzhinsky and Yagoda, OGPU and NKVD foreign operations against Trotsky and his followers were limited to surveillance, penetration, and destabilization. Under Yezhov the NKVD embarked on a policy of liquidation of the Trotskyite leadership. In December 1936 Yezhov set up an Administration of Special Tasks under his own per-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

158

sonal direction, with "mobile groups" to carry out assassinations

abroad ordered by

Stalin.

23

field

of action during the next two

was slow

to react to the outbreak of the

main

Its

years was Spain.

The

Soviet government

Spanish Civil

War

in July 1936,

wrongly believing that the Republican

government would quickly defeat the rebellion by the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco.

When

the experienced diplomat Marcel

Rosenberg eventually arrived as Soviet ambassador on August 27, however,

he was accompanied by a large retinue, including as head of a

Soviet military mission the former head of military intelligence, eral

Jan Berzin, a

tall,

gray-haired, taciturn

man,

ironically

Gen-

sometimes

mistaken for an Englishman. Other Soviet military advisers included Generals Goriev and Kulik and the future Marshals Malinovsky, fought in the Civil

War

under a variety of disguises: among them General Lazar Stern,

alias

Rokossovsky, and Konev. Red

Army

officers

General Emilio Kleber, provided by the port and a "legend" to match, iour of

Madrid"

at the

NKVD with a Canadian pass-

who won worldwide fame

end of 1936; General Mate Zalka,

a former Hungarian novelist

probably the most popular

as the "Sav-

alias

Lukacs,

who had joined the Red Army and become commander in the International Brigades;

General Janos Galicz, alias Gall, also of Hungarian origin and probably the least popular of the International Brigade

commanders; General

Dmitri Pavlov, alias Pablo, perhaps the ablest of the Republican tank

commanders; and General Karol Swierczewski,

Army

alias Walter, a

Red

officer of Polish origin, later vice-minister of defense in the

post-World

War

II

Polish

Communist government. 24

There was an equally powerful, though

far less visible,

NKVD

presence in Republican Spain, headed by the future defector Aleksandr Orlov,

who

arrived in September 1936 with the principal aim of secur-

ing the victory of Stalinism over the Marxist heresies that assailed

The ECCI informed

the Spanish

Communist Party

in

December:

Whatever happens, the final destruction of the Trotskyists must be achieved, exposing them to the masses as a fascist secret service carrying out provocations in the service of

Hitler

and General Franco, attempting

to split the

Popular

Front, conducting a slanderous campaign against the Soviet

Union, a secret service actively aiding fascism

in Spain.

26

25

it.

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

Such sectarian bigotry was

far

159

from the minds of most of the 35,000 them Communist, who set out for

foreign volunteers, a majority of

Spain to join the International Brigades in defense of the Republic. For

them

as for

most of the European

left,

who

mistakenly believed

Muswar was a crusade against international fascism for many, the poet, W. H. Auden, the greatest emotional experience of their

Franco's revolt to be a conspiracy orchestrated by Hitler and solini,

as for

—

the

lives:

What's your proposal? To build the just I

agree.

Or

Death? Very I

am

city? I will.

the suicide pact, the romantic

is it

well, I accept, for

your choice, your decision. Yes,

Stalin himself caught that

mood

in

an open

I

am

Spain.

letter to the

Spanish

Com-

munist leadership in October: "Liberation of Spain from the yoke of the Fascist reactionaries

the

common

is

cause of

Stalin's

not the private concern of Spaniards alone, but all

own main

progressive humanity."

27

concern, however, was Trotskyite infiltration

rather than the fascist menace.

At the main

recruiting center for the

International Brigades in Paris, non-Party volunteers were usually

questioned by

NKVD

officers,

who

concealed their

volunteers with passports were asked to surrender Spain; they were then forwarded to

The

NKVD

was

them on

Moscow Center by

later

used by

its illegals.

Most

arrival in

diplomatic bag.

particularly pleased with a haul of

United States passports

The

identities.

two thousand

28

International Brigades base in Albacete

was controlled by

a Comintern political directorate headed by the French representative

on the ECCI, Andre Marty, who for some years had been working for Soviet military intelligence, and who collaborated enthusiastically in the NKVD's war on Trotskyism. No non-Russian Communist was more obsessed than Marty with rooting out anti-Stalinist heresy. With Marty came a high-powered contingent of Comintern functionaries. Some, like his Italian deputies, Luigi Longo {alias Gallo) and Giuseppe de Vittorio

{alias Nicolette), loathed

Marty's sectarian fanaticism. Oth-

Marty mold, among them the German leader Walter Ulbricht, who ran an NKVD unit tracking down German, Austrian, and Swiss "Trotskyists" in the Inter-

ers

were doctrinaire

future East

national Brigades. 29

Stalinists in the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

160

The support

for the Republicans

by the volunteers of the Inter-

national Brigades could not equal the aid to the Nationalists from Nazi

Germany and

Though

Fascist Italy.

well aware that Franco

was

at

heart a traditionalist rather than a fascist, Hitler looked on Spain as a suitable battleground later

War.

on which

Hitler's

tary rebellion victory.

to rehearse the techniques of Blitzkrieg

of the Second World prompt assistance in the summer of 1936 saved the milifrom early defeat and set Franco on the path to ultimate

used to devastating

effect in the early years

30

The Republicans

suffered

from one further serious disadvan-

While the Nationalists were united, they were divided. Though the Russians did not cause the divisions, they turned them into a civil war tage.

within the Civil War.

Trotskyism was

By

the spring of 1937 Stalin's struggle against

danger of overshadowing the war against Franco.

in

Obrero de Unification Marxista (POUM), which had Trotskyite sympathies though it was sharply criticized by Stalin feared that the Partido

Trotsky himself, might give the great heretic a Spanish base. founder in 1935, Andreu Nin,

who had once been

Its co-

Trotsky's private

Moscow, was minister of justice in the Catalan government by the Communists in December 1936. In May 1937 the Spanish Communists, assisted by the NKVD, embarked on POUM's destruction. Slutsky, the head of INO, informed NKVD residents: "Our whole attention is focused on Catalonia and on our merciless fight against the Trotskyite bandits, the Fascists and the POUM." 31 In June Nin was arrested, brutally tortured, then flayed alive when he refused to confess to imaginary crimes. The Communists tried unsuccessfully to conceal his death by pretending that Nin had been seized by a Nazi snatch squad. 22 Soon afterward, another of Trotsky's former secretaries, Irwin Wolf, who had worked for him during his Norwegian exile, was kidnapped in Barcelona and liquidated by the secretary in

until ousted

NKVD. Among 33

others of

POUM's

international sympathizers

who

died in suspicious circumstances were Trotsky's former supporter Kurt

Landau; Marc Rhein, son of the old Menshevik leader Rafael Abramovich; Jose Robles, a former lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in the

United

States;

English miners' leader. shot after

and the journalist Bob

Many

of the

summary Communist terrified

file

were

illegally

The remnants of the Their lawyer Benito Pabon

court-martials.

leadership were arrested in June 1937.

became so

Smilie, son of the

POUM rank and

of assassination that he fled to the Philippines. 34

Dr. Juan Negrin,

who became Republican prime

minister in

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

May

161

was aware of some of the horrors perpetrated by the But he was also astoundingly naive. At the end of the war,

1937,

NKVD.

35

when the Nationalists displayed the private prisons built by the NKVD-dominated Servicio de Investigation Militar (SIM), Negrin dismissed them as bogus fascist propaganda. Ten years later he admitted he

had been deceived. 36 While the

POUM

NKVD

and

their

SIM

collaborators disposed of

supporters as discreetly as possible, Stalin's favorite French-

man, Andre Marty, orchestrated a public witch hunt against Trotskyite treachery. "To Marty," wrote one of the French Communists who worked for him, "the enemy was more inside the International Brigades and Loyalist

territory than

on the other

side of the lines." All breaches

of military discipline were, in his view, part of a vast Trotskyite plot to "split

and demoralize the International Brigades." His reputation as

summoned back to Paris to Communist leadership. Marty freely execution of five hundred members of the Inter-

"the butcher of Albacete" led to his being explain himself to the French

admitted ordering the

national Brigades. All, he declared, had committed "all sorts of crime"

and "undertaken espionage in favor of Franco." Ernest Hemingway, for all his sympathy for the International Brigades, found Marty "crazy as a bedbug. He has a mania for shooting people. ... He purifies more than Salvarsan." 37

Though

the

NKVD

"mobile groups" were most active in Spain, their

operations also extended to leading Trotskyists and traitors as far afield as

North America.

On

June

agent Juliette Stuart Poyntz

5,

1937, the disaffected

left

her

room

at the

American

Women's

NKVD

Association

clubhouse in Manhattan. She was never seen again. Evidence later

emerged that she had been lured to her death by a former Russian lover in the NKVD, Schachno Epstein, and her body buried behind a brick wall in a Greenwich Village house. 38 Most "wet affairs," however, were conducted on the other side of the Atlantic. In the

summer

of 1937, the

NKVD discovered, proba-

from Mark Zborowski {alias Etienne), that one of its officers in Western Europe had made secret contact with the leading Dutch

bly

Henryk

A

commanded by

the

deputy head of INO, Mikhail Shpigelglas, a short, stout figure with

fair

Trotskyist,

hair

and protruding

liquidate the culprit. in the

Sneevliet.

eyes,

was dispatched

On July

Netherlands, was

"mobile group"

to Paris to track

17 Walter Krivitsky, the

summoned

to

down and

NKVD resident

meet Shpigelglas

in the Paris

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

162

Exposition grounds at Vincennes. Shpigelglas revealed that the traitor

was a Soviet

Ludwig,

{alias

to

illegal

NKVD

an

of Polish origin in Paris

alias Reiss). Poretsky

had

officer in the Soviet trade

Russia, not expecting Shpigelglas opened

it

it

to be

opened

until

named Ignace Poretsky

just given a sealed dispatch

mission for transmission to it

arrived at

Moscow

ideally calculated to reinforce the paranoid fears of Stalin

patch contained a retsky's defection,

Stalin's crimes,

without mercy against Stalinism."

I

intend to devote

want

my

It

and

calling for "a fight

concluded:

feeble forces to the cause of Lenin. I

to continue the fight, for only our victory

proletarian revolution

—

will free

the U.S.S.R. of Stalinism. [Trotskyist]

Six weeks later,

dis-

Central Committee announcing Po-

letter to the

denouncing

and Yezhov

NKVD. The

underground had penetrated the

that a Trotskyist

Center.

and showed Krivitsky the contents. They were

—that of the

humanity of capitalism and

Forward

to

new

struggles!

For the

Fourth International!

on September

4,

Poretsky's bullet-ridden body was

found on a Swiss road near Lausanne. To lure him to his destruction, Shpigelglas used a friend of the Poretsky family

Schildbach, a

German Jewish Communist

refugee

named Gertrude who wrote to Po-

retsky to say that she urgently needed his advice. Schildbach

not bring herself to follow

met

moment

she could

NKVD instructions to hand Mrs.

Poretsky

Poretsky and his wife at a Lausanne cafe. At the

last

a box of chocolates laced with strychnine (later recovered by the Swiss police).

But Schildbach successfully lured Poretsky into a side road,

where he was shot with a submachine gun

NKVD

assassin of

Monegasque

origin,

at point-blank

range by an

Roland Francois Rossi

(alias

At the last moment Poretsky realized that he was being led into a trap. When his body was found, he was clutching in his hand a clump of Schildbach's graying hair. The NKVD attempted to lay a false trail by sending an anonymous letter to the Swiss police identifying the body Abiate).

as that of an international

arms smuggler. The plan

failed.

Though

Rossi and Schildbach escaped, their part in the assassination was revealed to the Swiss police by Rossi's mistress. In Rossi's abandoned suitcase the police found a detailed plan of Trotsky's

Mexico. 39

home

in exile in

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

163

The next victim of the NKVD mobile groups was the head of the White Guard ROVS in Paris, General Miller. In December 1936 Slutsky, the head of INO, arrived in Paris to begin organizing Miller's kidnap. He sent a request to Krivitsky, the resident in the Netherlands, asking him to recommend two agents capable of impersonating German officers. It was only after Miller's kidnap eight months later that Krivitsky real40 ized the purpose of the request. On September 22, 1937, like Kutepov seven years earlier, Miller disappeared in broad daylight on a Paris street.

Unlike Kutepov, however, he

Kusonsky,

general, General

to be

left

opened

if

a note with his secretary-

he failed to return. The note

revealed that Miller had an appointment with General Skoblin at 12:30 p.m.,

and that they were due to meet two Germans: one the military

attache from a neighboring country, the other from the Paris embassy. Skoblin's cover as an

NKVD

agent was blown. Late on the

evening after the kidnap General Kedrov, vice-president of the

and General Kusonsky sent

for Skoblin at

ROVS

ROVS,

headquarters and

asked him where Miller had gone. Unaware of Miller's note, Skoblin replied that he

had not seen him

note, Skoblin continued to

Kusonsky

insisted that Skoblin

Skoblin pushed past them, ran caped. His pursuers were case.

From the

By

all

day.

When

confronted with the

deny that he had seen Miller. Kedrov and

accompany them

down

to the police station.

several flights of stairs,

hampered by burned-out

lights

and

on the

es-

stair-

the time they reached the street, Skoblin had disappeared.

Paris he escaped to Spain,

NKVD.

where he was probably liquidated by

His wife Nadezhda Plevitskaya was brought to

December, found

twenty years' hard labor. She died

The prosecution

in prison in

trial in

and sentenced September 1940. 41

guilty of assisting in the kidnap,

at Plevitskaya's trial claimed,

on the

to

basis of

had been taken to a Soviet embassy body placed in a large trunk, which was taken

a Surete investigation, that Miller building, killed,

and

his

by Ford truck to be loaded onto a Russian freighter waiting at dockside

Le Havre. Several witnesses saw the trunk being loaded on board. was still alive inside the trunk, heavily drugged. Unlike Kutepov seven years earlier, he survived the voyage to Russia. Once in Moscow, he was brutally interrogated, given a secret trial and shot. Even Miller's interrogation and liquidation, however, failed to persuade the Center that the White Guards no longer posed any credi-

in

Miller, however,

ble threat.

When

Sergei Tretyakov's transcriptions of discussions at the

ROVS headquarters after Miller's abduction failed to reveal major new anti-Soviet plots, the Center concluded that Tretyakov

(code-named

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

164

Ivanov) must have joined the plotters. dency:

"We

believe that Ivanov

conversations

is

It

telegraphed to the Paris

42 sending us pure inventions." In

is

Center that was deceiving

resi-

deceiving us, and instead of real reality,

it

was the

with further imaginary conspiracies.

itself

had a devastating effect on the ROVS. Kusovsky was wrongly accused by some White Guards of having taken Miller's kidnap

part in the plot.

under

its

new

The

ROVS moved its headquarters to Brussels,

head, General Arkhangelsky,

it

where,

proved even more mori-

bund than under Miller. 43 Belgium was also the site of the next NKVD assassination. At the beginning of 1938, after a long manhunt, the OGPU defector Georgi Agabekov, who had fled to the West nine years 44 earlier, was murdered by a mobile group. A manhunt also began for two more recent defectors: the NKVD Dutch resident Krivitsky and the great virtuoso of the Comintern front organizations, Willi Miinzenberg, both of whom had refused orders to return to Moscow to certain liquidation in 1937. In July 1938 the manhunt was extended to cover the

NKVD

resident in Republican Spain, Aleksandr Orlov,

refused a recall by

The

who

also

Center. 45

NKVD abroad, how-

chief "enemies of the people" hunted by the

ever, gets:

Moscow

were the leading Trotskyists. The

NKVD

had three main

tar-

Trotsky's son and principal organizer, Lev Sedov; the secretary-

designate of the Trotskyite Fourth International, which was to be

founded formally

in

September 1938, Rudolf Klement; and

Leon Trotsky,

great heretic himself,

of Trotskyite infiltration of the

finally the

Mexico. Stalin's fears

in exile in

NKVD were kept alive by the defection

of Poretsky's friend Krivitsky in October 1937.

The following month,

Krivitsky obtained an introduction to Sedov in Paris through the lawyer of Poretsky's widow:

When I saw

Sedov

I

told

him frankly

that

join the Trotskyists, but rather for advice

He

received

me

cordially,

daily. I learned to

personality in his

and

admire

own

right.

I

saw him

did not

come

to

thereafter almost

son of Leon Trotsky as a

shall never forget the disinter-

and comfort he gave me agents were after me. He was

ested help Stalin

I

this

I

and comradeship.

in those still

days when the

very young but was

exceptionally gifted

—charming, well-informed,

the treason trials in

Moscow

efficient.

In

was said that he received vast sums of money from Hitler and the Mikado. I found him it

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40) living the life of a revolutionist, toiling all

day

165

in the cause

46 of the opposition, in actual need of better food and clothing.

was unaware that Sedov's closest collaborator, was an NKVD agent. Stalin cannot

Krivitsky, however,

Mark Zborowski have

(alias Etienne),

failed to see the

most

sinister significance in the

"almost daily"

meetings between Sedov and Krivitsky, dutifully reported by Etienne to

Moscow

in

the decision to proceed with Sedov's liquidation.

Center. Those meetings must surely have played

some

part

Trotsky was a demanding father with the unhappy knack of robbing

his children of their self-esteem.

all

vitsky's admiration for his son's dedication

and

He

did not share Kri-

efficiency.

While Sedov

struggled in poverty and ill-health to publish the Biulletin and remain in

touch with the feuding, disintegrating Trotskyite movement, his

isfied

with the

way

the question of

its

am utterly dissat-

4

Mexico

in

January 1938: T

the Biulletin

is

conducted, and

father wrote angrily from

transfer to

New

I

must pose anew

York."

Trying desperately to meet Trotsky's unreasonable demands,

Sedov repeatedly postponed an operation for appendicitis, despite

re-

was clear that he could delay no longer. Etienne helped to convince him that, to avoid NKVD surveillance, he must have the operation not at a French current

illness.

After a severe attack on February

1938,

8,

it

hospital but at a small private clinic run by Russian emigres, which,

though Sedov did not suspect agents.

No

it,

was probably penetrated by

NKVD

sooner had Etienne ordered the ambulance than, as he later

admitted, he alerted the

NKVD.

Sedov was operated on the same evening. Over the next few days he seemed to make a normal recovery. For alleged security reasons, Etienne refused to reveal the address of the clinic (which he

instantly given to the

had

NKVD) to French Trotskyites. Sedov was visited

only by his wife, Jeanne, and Etienne.

On February

1

3

he had a sudden,

mysterious relapse and was found wandering, shouting deliriously,

through the

clinic corridors.

The surgeon was

so perplexed by Sedov's

condition that he asked his wife whether he might have attempted to take his

own

life.

poisoned by the

Jeanne burst into tears and said he must have been

NKVD.

Sedov's condition deteriorated rapidly despite repeated blood transfusions; he died in great pain thirty-two.

A

on February 16

at the age of only

routine inquest attributed his death to postoperational

complications, heart failure, and low powers of resistance. But there

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

166

were serious discrepancies

in the evidence.

Though

there

is,

unsurpris-

no proof of NKVD involvement, the probability is that the NKVD was responsible. 47 The NKVD already had a sophisticated medical section, the Kamera (Chamber), probably established by Yagoda, who had trained as a pharmacist, which experimented in the

ingly,

48 use of drugs and poisons. There can be no doubt that Sedov, like his

was targeted by an NKVD mobile group, and once the NKVD him to a clinic which it had probably already penetrated, it is scarcely likely that it made no attempt to end his life. father,

lured

Sedov's death gave the ist

NKVD the leading place in the Trotsky-

organization. Etienne took over responsibility for publishing the

Biulletin, kept in

touch with refugees from Stalinist Russia

who

tried

to contact Trotsky, and became the main link with his European followers.

He

successfully embroiled Trotsky with Sneevliet, further embit-

tered relations between Trotsky

and Jeanne, and unobtrusively

him how

Trotsky's confidence that he asked

assisted

was so certain of

the feuds between the Trotskyite sects. Etienne

to respond to suspicions

by Sneevliet and others that he was working for the

NKVD.

Trotsky

advised him to challenge his accusers to substantiate their charges before an

independent commission.

Trotsky's

own

confidence in

Etienne was unaffected.

The NKVD's next major Rudolf Klement, who was

in

Trotskyist target was the

German

charge of organization for the founding

conference of Trotsky's Fourth International, due to be held later in the

On

Klement vanished mysteriously from his Paris home. About a fortnight later Trotsky received a letter ostensibly written by Klement and posted in New York, denouncing him for allying with year.

Hitler

July 13

and other imaginary crimes. Copies of the

number of Trotsky's French no doubt

correctly, as either

by Klement with an

NKVD

letter also

reached a

supporters. Trotsky dismissed the letter,

an

NKVD forgery or a document written

revolver held to his head.

The NKVD's

was probably for Klement simply to disappear after his fictitious denunciation. Soon after the letter's arrival, however, a headless corpse was found washed ashore on the banks of the Seine. Two French intention

Trotskyists were able to recognize

it

as the

body of Klement by

identify-

ing distinctive scars on the hands. 49

The Fourth ence" opened

at the

International

home

was

stillborn. Its

founding "confer-

near Paris of the French Trotskyist, Alfred

Rosmer, on September 3, 1938, attended by only twenty-one delegates, claiming to represent mostly minuscule Trotskyist groups in eleven

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

The "Russian

countries.

now

section,"

167

whose authentic members had by

probably been entirely exterminated, was represented by the

NKVD

agent Etienne. Also on the fringes of the conference was

Ramon Mercader

{alias

Jacques Mornard, alias Frank Jacson), lover

of the American Trotskyist interpreter Sylvia AgelofF, and later to 50 achieve fame as the assassin of Trotsky.

Trotsky's biographer, Isaac Deutscher, fairly concludes that

was "little more than a fiction," with almost negligible influence beyond the dwindling, faction-ridden ranks of Trotsky's supporters. Trotsky himself had become hopelessly out of touch in his Mexican exile. While recognizing "the disproportion between our strength today and our tasks tomorrow," he forecast confidently that "in the course of the coming ten years the program of the Fourth International will gain the adherence of millions, and these revolutionary millions will be able to storm heaven and earth." 51 Perhaps the only statesman who took Trotsky's prophecies seriously was Stalin himself. Messages from the NKVD to its residencies abroad and from the Comintern to its member parties constantly complained of the lack of energy with which Trotskyism was being rooted out. One angry telegram to Stockholm and Oslo that stuck in Gordievsky's memory was typical of many in the files. "The campaign against Trotskyist the newly founded International

terrorist bandits,"

intolerable

it

declared, "is being pursued in your countries with

passivity."

52

In Stalin's conspiratorial mental universe,

Trotsky remained an even more dangerous opponent than Adolf Hitler.

With

Hitler Stalin foresaw, perhaps as early as the mid- 1930s, the

possibility of

an accommodation. With Trotsky

it

was a struggle

to the

death.

After the

last great

prewar show

Union began

trial in

March 1938

the Great Terror

wind down. In July Lavrenti Beria, head was made Yezhov's first deputy. By the time Yezhov was dismissed from the NKVD on December 8, effective power had already passed to Beria. Throughout the Great Terror, Stalin had avoided public responsibility. Yezhov's dismissal enabled Stalin to make him the scapegoat for such excesses of the Yezhovin the Soviet

of the Transcaucasian

to

NKVD,

shchina as could be publicly admitted. 53 His successor, Beria, struck Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, as

risy."

the

54

He was

NKVD

to

"a magnificent modern specimen of the

embodiment of oriental perfidy, flattery and hypocman of awesome personal depravity, who used procure, in many cases to snatch from the Moscow

artful courtier, the

also a

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

168

streets,

an endless supply of

women

—frequently

schoolgirls

—to be

raped and sexually abused. Husbands or parents who complained were 55 likely to end in the gulag. Under Beria, the Great Terror gave way to more selective terror. The manhunt for Trotsky, however, continued unabated. The real Trotsky in Mexico continued to bear little resemblance to the

who haunted

mythical Trotsky

Day

1940, twenty thousand

Stalin's diseased imagination.

On May

Mexican Communists marched through

Mexico City with banners demanding, "Out with Trotsky!" 56 Even by the calculations of Trotsky's entourage, Mexico contained no more than thirty active Trotskyists, spite their feuds,

Trotsky's

home

The

in

however,

split into several all

feuding factions. 57 De-

took turns standing guard around

Coyoacan.

KGB remembers the assassination of Trotsky as one of its

most important "special operations." The

Memory Room,

First

Chief Directorate

constructed in 1979, contains a portrait and eulogy of

the organizer of the assassination,

Nahum

(Leonid) Aleksandrovich

whose involvement in "wet affairs" went back to the liquidaBlyumkin in 1929. Eitingon was one of the few Jews in the NKVD to survive the purges. 58 He was remembered by one of his officers as a heavily built man with a bald head, narrow forehead, and Eitingon,

tion of

small, drilling eyes. 59 alias

He

took part in the Spanish Civil

War under

the

General Kotov, advising the International Brigades on partisan

warfare behind the Nationalist lover of the Barcelona

recruited both her

of Trotsky

As

and her son

—as NKVD

lines.

While

in

Spain he became the

Communist Caridad Mercader agents.

Ramon Mercader

del Rio,

and

—the future assassin

60

the plan of Trotsky's villa discovered by the Swiss police in

murder of Poretsky in 1937 showed, Trotsky surveillance from the moment he arrived in The future defector Vladimir Petrov was able in 1948 to read

Rossi's suitcase after the

was under Mexico. 61

one of the

close

files,

NKVD

four or five inches thick, dealing with Trotsky's assassi-

nation. It included

numerous photographs taken

inside the villa,

show-

ing the guards, the fences, Trotsky with his wife, Trotsky having tea

with friends, Trotsky's dog, and a variety of other subjects. Trotsky's

entourage in Mexico was probably penetrated, in varying degrees and at various times,

by several

the others' identity. file,

The

NKVD agents,

first,

each doubtless unaware of

according to Petrov's recollection of the

was a woman secretary recruited during Trotsky's Norwegian

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

exile."

was

The most

Ramon

influential

169

mole within Trotsky's entourage, however,

Mercader.

Mercader had been well

trained. Despite

months of

intensive

questioning after his arrest, he revealed nothing about either his real identity (which

was discovered only

in

1953) or his

work

for the

NKVD. He was highly intelligent, fluent in several languages, a trained and possessed of remarkable self-control. Sylvia Ageloff admitted that she never doubted his love for her until after Trotsky's assassination. Prolonged psychological testing showed that Mercader had an unusually rapid reaction time, an almost photographic memory, the ability to find his way in the dark, the capacity to learn quickly and remember complex instructions. He was able to take a Mauser rifle apart in the dark and reassemble it in three and athlete, a skilled dissembler

three-quarter minutes. 63

Mercader joined his Trotskyist mistress, Sylvia Ageloff, in New York in September 1939, traveling on a doctored Canadian passport obtained from a volunteer in the International Brigades, in the name of Frank Jacson (evidently an eccentric NKVD spelling of "Jackson"). In New York he made contact with the NKVD resident, Gaik Ovakimyan, through whom most instructions from Moscow Center on prepa64 rations for the assassination were forwarded. Following NKVD instructions, Mercader moved to Mexico City in October, allegedly to work for an import-export agency. There he renewed contact with his mother and her lover, Nahum Eitingon. In January 1940, at Mercader's persuasion, Sylvia Ageloff followed him to Mexico City. As Eitingon had no doubt calculated, Ageloff made contact with her guru, Leon Trotsky, and spent two months doing secretarial work for him. Mercader drove her to Trotsky's villa and returned to collect her after each visit. While Ageloff was in Mexico, Mercader made no attempt to enter the villa compound but gradually became a well-known figure to the guards and won the confidence of Trotsky's French disciples Alfred and Marguerite Rosmer. Shortly after Ageloff's return to New York in March 1940, the Rosmers allowed Mercader into the villa compound for the first time. 65

At

this stage,

Mercader's role was

The

still

that of penetration agent

had been turned into a fortress defended by iron bars, electrified wires, an automatic alarm system, machine guns, a permanent ten-man police guard, and unofficial Trotskyist sentries. Mercader's main task was to provide the intelligence on the villa's defenses, inhabitants, and guards necessary to planning an armed atrather than assassin.

villa

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

170

tack.

and

The

attack itself was led by the celebrated

painter,

David

Mexican Communist

Alfaro Siqueiros, a veteran of the International

Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Just before four o'clock

on the morning of

May

over twenty men, dressed in police and army uniforms,

23 a group of

commanded by

Siqueiros, surprised and overpowered the guard, and raked the villa bedrooms with machine-gun fire. Trotsky and his wife survived by

throwing themselves beneath the bed. The police

later

counted seventy-

bedroom wall. Siqueiros later claimed, improbably, that the object of the raid had been not to kill Trotsky but to stage a dramatic protest against his presence in Mexico. Released on bail, he escaped from Mexico with the help of the Chilean Communist poet

three bullet holes in the

Pablo Neruda. Five days after the raid Mercader met Trotsky for the

Amiable as

him how villa,

ever,

to fly

it.

first

time.

he gave Trotsky's grandson a toy glider and showed

Over the next three months he paid ten

visits to

the

never overstaying his welcome, sometimes bringing small presents

with him, and meeting Trotsky himself on only two or three occasions.

He made perhaps two trips to see Ovakimyan in New York to complete preparations for the assassination. On August 20 Mercader arrived at had written on which Trotsky agreed to give his comments. He also brought with him a dagger sewn into the lining of his raincoat, a revolver in one pocket and an ice pick in another. The murder weapon was to be the ice pick. The revolver was taken as a precaution, in case he had difficulty making his escape. The purpose of the dagger remains unclear; perhaps Mercader concealed it in his raincoat in case the other weapons were discovered. The NKVD had used similar methods before. In the winter of 1938-39 an NKVD officer named Bokov had been summoned by Beria and asked if he was strong enough to kill a man with a single blow. "Yes, Comrade Commissar," replied Bokov. Beria explained that the NKVD had discovered that a Soviet ambassador in the Middle East was planning to defect. Bokov was sent with an assistant to ensure that the ambassador was "rendered harmless." On their arrival he was given a short iron bar by the NKVD resident, concealed it in his clothing, then went with his assistant and the resident to pay a courtesy call on the ambassador. Bokov maneuvered himself behind the ambassador, and killed him with a single blow to the skull. He and his assistant wrapped the body in a carpet to conceal the bloodstains, bundled it into a car, then drove out of the city and buried it. The ambassador's wife the villa with an article he

"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)

171

was told that her husband had been urgently recalled to Moscow and had made arrangements for her and the children to follow him by train. They were, almost certainly, stopped en route and transferred to a labor

camp

for

"enemies of the people." 66

blow to the back of body was discovered. As Trotsky sat in his study, studying the article at his desk, Mercader took the ice pick from his pocket, closed his eyes, and brought it down with all the force he could muster on Trotsky's skull. But Trotsky did not

Mercader too expected

the head, and

make

to kill with a single

his escape before the

die instantly. Instead he let out "a terrible, piercing cry" ("I shall hear that cry," said Mercader, "all assassin's hand,

him.

He

my

and grasped the

life"),

turned, sank his teeth into the

ice pick before his strength

ebbed from

died in a hospital the next day, August 21, 1940.

The

KGB

file

recounts the assassination in minute detail.

records, Petrov later recalled, that the fatal

It

blow was struck with the

broad, not the pointed, end of the ice pick. 67 Mercader was sentenced to

twenty years

in jail.

His mother and Eitingon escaped to the Soviet

Union by prearranged

routes. In

Moscow Senora Mercader was

re-

ceived by Beria, presented to Stalin in the Kremlin, and decorated with the Order of Lenin. Within a few years she told the Spanish

Communist Party

was consumed by guilt. She Comintern head-

representative at

quarters:

They

[the

NKVD]

no longer have any use

for me. ...

Caridad Mercader

is

worst of assassins

.

am

I

known abroad. And it is dangerous to use me. But they know that I am no longer the woman I used to be.

also .

.

.

not simply Caridad Mercader, but the .

.

Not only did

I

travel

throughout

Europe tracking down Chekists who have abandoned Paradise, so as to assassinate them pitilessly. I have done even more! ... I made and I did this for them an assassin of my son, of Ramon, of this son whom I saw one day come out of Trotsky's house bound and bleeding and unable to come to me, and I had to flee in one direction and Leonid [Eitin-

—

—

gon] in another. 68

Ramon Mercader kept the Stalinist faith throughout his years in prison. History, he claimed,

would

see

him

as a soldier in the world revolution

who had done the working class an immense service by ridding it of a leader who set out to betray it. He enjoyed singing the revolutionary

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

172

song "The Young Guard," stressing the cause!"

Had Mercader been

last line:

"We work for a great

willing to reveal his true identity or his

KGB connection, he could have won parole. He refused and served the full

twenty-year term. In 1960 Mercader was freed from jail,

ico for Cuba,

and traveled

applied to join the Soviet

down. 69 Outside the Stalin era,

via Czechoslovakia to Russia.

Communist

KGB,

Party, his application

left

Mex-

When

he

was turned

Trotsky's assassin had become, in the post-

an embarrassing reminder of a paranoid

past.

6 Sigint,

Agent Penetration,

and the Magnificent Five from Cambridge (1930-39)

Of

Memory non-KGB officer.

the score of portraits of Soviet intelligence heroes in the

Room

of the First Chief Directorate, only one

is

of a

The exception is General Yan Karlovich Berzin, commander of a Cheka detachment in the Civil War but best known as the head of Soviet military intelligence (then the Fourth Department of the General

GRU,

Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie) from 1924 to 1935. Berzin was born in Latvia in 1890 and joined the revolutionary underground while still in his teens, spending several years in jail and hard labor in Siberia. In 1919 he served in the short-lived Latvian Soviet government. During his early years in military intelligence his closest collaborators, many of whom came from similar backgrounds, were known as the "Latvian fraction," just as Dzerzhinsky's chief lieutenants were known for a time as the "Polish fraction." In 1935 Berzin was sent on a Red Army mission to the Far East. He was recalled in August 1936 to become head of the Soviet military mission to the Spanish Republican government. A year later he was ordered back to Russia at the height of the Great Terror and liquidated. Berzin owes his place in the KGB hall of fame to his part in the expansion of foreign intelligence collection by both sigint and agent penetration. At the beginning of the 1930s he took part in setting up Staff, later

the l

2

173

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

174

a combined

OGPU/Fourth Department unit within the OGPU

Special

Department (Spets-Otdel), to handle both civilian and military

sigint,

headed by Gleb Boky of the OGPU with Colonel P. Kharkevich of the Fourth Department as his deputy. The unit was the most secret in

OGPU.

Lubyanka but

in the

building of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs on

Kuz-

netsky Bridge. According to Evdokia Kartseva (later Petrova),

who

the

Until 1935

it

was housed not

in the

joined the unit in 1933, the personnel were under strict orders not to reveal unit,

its

address even to their parents. 3 Like most young

Kartseva lived in fear of

women

Boky walked with

head.

its

in the

a stoop and

had the curious habit of wearing a raincoat all year round. Kartseva shuddered at his "cold, piercing blue eyes which gave people the feeling that he hated the sight of them."

Though

in his fifties,

Boky

prided

still

himself on his sexual athleticism and arranged regular group-sex week-

ends in his dacha.

When Evdokia

Kartseva asked a male colleague

about Boky's orgies, he replied: "If you so

about this to anyone, he will make playing with

dacha.

On

"plainest tion."

fire."

the night

and

Kartseva lived shift,

when

she

life

much

as

open your mouth

unbearable for you.

You

in fear of being invited to felt

are

Boky's

most vulnerable, she wore her

dullest clothes for fear of attracting his

unwelcome

atten-

4

Despite the personal depravity of

OGPU/Fourth Department

unit

its

chief,

was the world's

sourced sigint agency. In particular,

it

the combined

largest

received far

and

more

best-re-

assistance

from espionage than any similar agency in the West. Most humint agencies acquired cipher materials from time to time, but during the 1930s only the OGPU and the Fourth Department, following a lead set by the Okhrana before the Revolution, made their acquisition a major

combined sigint unit, the foreign had the greatest influence on Soviet policy were JapaWorking in the Japanese subsection of the unit, Evdokia Petrova

priority. In the early years of the

intercepts that nese.

discovered that Japanese cipher materials "were being secured through agents." 5 Those agents included, at various times in the 1930s, officials in the

Japanese embassies in Berlin and Prague. 6 Berzin's second major claim to fame within both the

the

GRU

is

KGB and

his part in adapting the techniques of agent penetration

developed by the

OGPU

in the

1920s (principally for use against the

White Guard emigration) to infiltrate foreign government bureaucracies and intelligence services during the 1930s. According to the classified history

of

INO

prepared to commemorate

its

sixtieth anniversary

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

in 1980, that strategy

175

evolved in discussions between Berzin, Artuzov,

INO, and Pyatnitsky, the head of the Comintern's OMS. Berzin took the lead. At the beginning of the 1930s, INO's chief targets for penetration remained the White Guards, soon followed by the Trotskyists. Berzin was more interested in using agent penetration as a means of foreign intelligence collection. His lead, however, was swiftly followed by the OGPU and NKVD. The lines between Fourth Department and OGPU/NKVD responsibilities were frequently blurred during the 1930s. Fourth Department agents commonly collected political as well as military intelligence. The OGPU/ NKVD less commonly collected military as well as political intellithe head of It

seems

7

likely that

8

gence. Both increasingly took over

OMS

intelligence networks.

was Richard Sorge. a Hero of the approved hagiographies

Berzin's most successful penetration agent

In 1964, twenty years after his death, Sorge was Soviet Union, honored by a series of officially

and

—most unusually

stamps.

When

for a foreign agent

Hede Massing,

"romantic, idealistic scholar" slightly slanted

as "startlingly good-looking," a

who exuded charm: "His

and heavy-browed, had

no reason at all." 9 Richard Sorge was born

German oil

special issue of postage

Sorge joined the Fourth Department in 1929, he struck

the Comintern agent,

for

—a

made

driller,

in the

[the] quality

Caucasus

cold blue eyes,

of looking amused

in 1895, the

son of a

whom he later described as "unmistakably national-

and imperialist," and a Russian mother. He went to school in Berlin, was wounded fighting in the First World War, became disillusioned by the "meaninglessness" of the devastation that it caused, and joined the revolutionary wing of the labor movement. The Bolshevik Revolution persuaded him "not only to support the movement theoretically and ideologically but to become an actual part of it." After the war Sorge gained a Ph.D. in political science from Hamburg University and worked as a Communist militant. Late in 1924 he moved to Moscow, beginning work for OMS early in 1925 and acquiring Soviet citizenship. From 1927 to 1929 OMS sent him on a series of intelligence missions in Germany and, he later claimed, to England and Scandinavia. In November 1929 he was personally recruited by General Berzin to the Fourth Department, though he also remained in touch with Pyatnitsky and OMS-. ist

His

first

assignment was to run an espionage network in Shang-

hai under cover as a journalist

who

later

German journalist. There he became

his

recruited a Japanese

most important agent, Hotsumi Ozaki,

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

176

a

young Marxist

from a wealthy family having excellent con-

idealist

nections with the Japanese government. In January 1933 Sorge re-

turned to

Moscow and was

congratulated personally by Berzin on his

achievements in Shanghai. His next, and by far his most important, assignment was Tokyo.

En

route he spent several months in Germany,

strengthening his cover as a journalist and establishing himself as a convivial

member of the Nazi

farewell dinner in Berlin.

10

Party. Dr. Goebbels himself attended his

On

Tokyo

his arrival in

boasted after his arrest eight years

The fact in

that

I

German embassy

trust

by people there was the

foundation of my organization in Japan the fact that

made

use of

I infiltrated it

for

my

September 1933

later:

successfully approached the

Japan and won absolute

in

German embassy. He

Sorge rapidly ingratiated himself with the

Even in Moscow embassy and

into the center of the

spying activity

evaluated as ex-

is

tremely amazing, having no equivalent in history. 11

Sorge was unaware that there were by then several other penetrations that

Moscow

considered no

less

"amazing."

Moscow on both German and

It

was Sorge's spy

nonetheless, that provided

with

human

Japanese policy.

sources

its

best intelligence

ring,

from

During the greater part of Sorge's eight years in Tokyo the Kremlin considered Japan the main threat to the Soviet Union. The Great Depression of the early 1930s destroyed the shallow roots of Japanese democracy. For most Japanese soldiers the only answer to the

problems created by the Depression was strong government

at

home

and expansion abroad. The Depression created a climate of opinion in which the army was able to end its subjection to the politicians and win popular support for

its territorial

ambitions.

In September 193 1 Japanese troops stationed near the Japanese-

owned South Manchurian Railway blew up

a section of the line.

They

then accused Chinese troops of responsibility for the explosion and used

what became euphemistically known

as the

"Manchurian Incident" as The Japanese govern-

a pretext to begin the occupation of Manchuria.

ment accepted a League of Nations drawal of its troops, but

resolution calling for the with-

swept Japan the politicians proved powerless to impose iheir will on the soldiers. Early in 1932 the army established the Manchurian puppet state of

in the face of the nationalist fervor that

Manchukuo under

the nominal rule of the last of the

Manchu

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

Sigint,

now

emperors. Japan

177

controlled a long land frontier with the Soviet

Union. Until the mid- 1930s

Moscow

regarded

Germany

as a

For several years

serious military threat than Japan.

it

much

growth of Nazism with an equanimity bordering on complacency, garding

it

less

viewed the re-

as a sign of the death throes of German capitalism rather than

German war of conquest in the East. Right up moment when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933, the Comintern urged German Communists to concenthe portent of a future to the

trate their fire

enemy on

socialist enemy on the left rather than the Nazi Though Maxim Litvinov, commissar for foreign

on the

the right.

warned of the Nazi regime's "most extreme anti-Soviet ideas" end of 1933, he emphasized that the main threat continued to come from Japan. Over the next few years Soviet policy toward Japan and Germany, like that of the West, was based on appeasement. Its overriding priority was to avoid war with either. 12 On his arrival in Tokyo in September 1933 Sorge was ordered "to give very careful study to the question of whether or not Japan was affairs,

in a general review of Soviet foreign policy at the

planning to attack the U.S.S.R."

He

wrote after his arrest eight years

later:

This was for

many

to

me and my

it

was the

years the most important duty assigned

group;

it

would not be

sole object of

U.S.S.R., as

it

my

far

wrong

to say that

mission in Japan.

.

.

.

The

viewed the prominent role and attitude taken

by the Japanese military churian incident, had

in foreign policy after the

come

Man-

to harbor a deeply implanted

suspicion that Japan was planning to attack the Soviet

Union, a suspicion so strong that

my

frequently expressed

opinions to the contrary were not always fully appreciated in

Moscow. 13 If Moscow's fears of Japanese attack were sometimes exaggerated, they were not without foundation. The Japanese army was split for several

years into

two warring

factions: the

Kodo-ha, which wanted war with

whose ambitions were cena failed coup d'etat by the Kodo-

Russia, and the less adventurous Tosei-ha, tered

on China. Not

until 1936, after

ha, did the Tosei-ha gain a clear victory over their rivals.

Western injunctions to Japan not to

interfere in

By then

China were, said the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

178

Japanese minister of war, "like telling a a

woman who was

open war

man

in July 1937,

it

not to get involved with

By

the time Japan began

had already established

indirect control over

already pregnant by him."

14 of northeast China.

much

When Hede Massing met

Richard Sorge

in

1935 for the

first

time since 1929, she found him visibly changed by his years in China

and Japan. Though he was still "startlingly good-looking" and a dedicated Communist; "little of the charm of the romantic, idealistic scholar was left." A Japanese journalist described him as "a typical, quick-tempered, hard-drinking." 15 swashbuckling, arrogant Nazi .

.

.

That image helped Sorge win the confidence of the German embassy. His closest contacts within the embassy were Colonel Eugen Ott, mili-

from March 1934, and Mrs. Ott, with whom Sorge had one of his numerous affairs. Sorge saw much of the information on the Japanese armed forces and military planning that Ott forwarded to Berlin, as well as many of the documents received by the embassy on tary attache

German policy in April 1938,

Japanese

in the

affairs

important

Far East.

When Ott was promoted to ambassador

Sorge had breakfast with him each day, briefing him on

and drafting some of

member

his reports to Berlin.

The most

of Sorge's spy ring, Hotsumi Ozaki, had growing

access to Japanese policy-making as a

member of the brains

trust of the

leading statesman Prince Konoye. Late in 1935 he was able to photo-

graph a planning document for the following year, which indicated that

was no immediate likelihood of a Japanese attack on Russia. Sorge correctly forecast the invasion of China in July 1937, once again providing reassurance that there were no plans for an invasion of Sithere

beria.

16

The

officially

authorized Soviet eulogies of Richard Sorge

all

contain at least one deliberate distortion, which has not so far been detected in the West. Sorge's intelligence reports are to conceal the successes of Soviet sigint, a in the era of glasnost, remains officially

Sigint

may

commonly used

form of intelligence

unmentionable

that,

even

in the U.S.S.R.

well have been an even

intelligence than Sorge himself.

more important source of Japanese The single piece of intelligence that

probably did most to arouse Soviet fears of a Japanese attack was a decrypted telegram from the Japanese military attache in Moscow, Lieutenant Colonel Yukio Kasahara, a supporter of the Kodo-ha faction, to the

General Staff in March 1931,

six

months before the "Man-

churian Incident" and over two years before Sorge's arrival in Tokyo:

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

Sigint,

It will

179

be [Japan's] unavoidable destiny to clash with the

U.S.S.R. sooner or

war comes, the

later.

.

.

The sooner

.

better for us.

the Soviet-Japanese

We must realize that with every

day the situation develops more favorably for the U.S.S.R. In short,

I

a speedy

hope the authorities will make up their minds for war with the Soviet Union and initiate policies

accordingly.

Moscow

"Manchurian Incident" in September was the prelude to the attack on the Soviet Union advocated by Kasahara. It was further alarmed by remarks by Hirota, the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, to a visiting Japanese general, reported in Unsurprisingly,

feared that the

another intercepted Japanese telegram: Putting aside the question of whether or not Japan should

make war

against the Soviet Union, there

is

the need to take

a strong policy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, with the resolve to fight the U.S.S.R. at

any time necessary. The

however, should not be defense against rather, the occupation of Eastern Siberia.

In the winter of 1931-32 scare.

The Comintern

Moscow

objective,

Communism

but,

17

experienced a major Japanese war

secretariat harshly

reprimanded foreign com-

rades for failing to grasp "the intimate connection between the Japanese

Manchuria and the preparation of a great anti-Soviet war." it demanded immediate action by member parties to sabotage arms production for, and shipment to, Japan: attack on

In February 1932

Decisive mobilization of the masses

against the transportation of

which

travel to

is

required, primarily

weapons and military

Japan along the tracks of every

supplies, capitalist

railway and from the ports of every capitalist country. 18

So alarmed had Moscow become that in March 1932 it took the remarkable step of announcing: "We are in possession of documents which originate from officials of the most senior military circles in Japan, and contain plans for an attack on the U.S.S.R. and the seizure of

its

Even more remarkably, Izvestia published decrypted from intercepted Japanese telegrams revealing both Kasahara's

territory."

extracts

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

180

appeal for "a speedy war" and Hirota's call for the occupation of Siberia.

19

Moscow's willingness to publish this dramatic evidence of the Japanese menace derived, at least in part, from the knowledge that the Japanese were already aware that their diplomatic codes and ciphers had been broken. During 1931 the sacked American code breaker Herbert Yardley published a sensational volume of memoirs revealing that the United States "Black Chamber" had decrypted Japanese diplomatic traffic. There was an immediate diplomatic uproar, with the Japanese foreign minister publicly accusing the United States of a

"breach of faith" by intercepting Japanese communications at the

Washington conference ten years

earlier.

20

In the spring of 1932 Kasahara, whose call for "a speedy war" had so alarmed Moscow a year before, was appointed chief of the Russian section in the Second Department of the Japanese General Staff. His successor as military attache in Moscow, also a supporter of the Kodo-ha faction, Torashiro Kawabe, reported to Tokyo that a Russo-Japanese war was "unavoidable." Kasahara replied that military preparations were complete: "War against Russia is necessary for Japan 21 to consolidate Manchuria." For the next few years the main priority of Soviet cryptanalysis, as of Sorge's espionage ring, was to monitor the danger of a Japanese attack that was never to materialize. Perhaps the main sigint success of the mid- 1930s was in monitoring the prolonged negotiations in Berlin between Baron Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Japanese military attache (later ambassador), General Hiroshi Oshima, which culminated in the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan, officially announced on November 25, 1936. The German embassy in Tokyo, which shared most of its secrets with Sorge, was in only distant touch with the progress of the negotiations. Thanks to sigint, Moscow was in closer touch. In the summer of

1936 an agent in Berlin run by Walter Krivitsky, the in the Netherlands, gained access to

book and

its files

NKVD

resident

both the Japanese embassy's code

on the German- Japanese negotiations. "From then

on," boasted Krivitsky, "all correspondence between General

Oshima

and Tokyo flowed regularly through our hands." 22 Telegrams between Tokyo and the Japanese embassy in Moscow decrypted by the NKVD/ Fourth Department joint sigint unit were, no doubt, a supplementary source of intelligence on the progress of negotiations.

The published

version of the Anti-Comintern Pact merely pro-

vided for an exchange of information on Comintern activities and coop-

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

181

A secret protocol, however, added that became the victim of "an unprovoked [Soviet] attack or threat of attack," both would immediately consult together on the action to take and neither would do anything to "ease the situation of the U.S.S.R.," a tortuous formula into which it was easy for the Kremlin to read more sinister intentions. Only three days after the publication of the Anti-Comintern Pact, Litvinov, the commissar for foreign affairs, announced to a Congress of Soviets: eration in preventive measures. if either of the signatories

As

for the published

Japanese-German agreement ...

it is

only a cover for another agreement which was simulta-

neously discussed and initialed, probably also signed, and

which was not published and

is

not intended for publication.

what I say, was precisely to the working out of this secret document, in which the word communism is not even mentioned, that the fifteen months of negotiations between the Japanese military attache and the German super-diplomat were deI

declare, with a full sense of responsibility for

that

it

voted.

23

Litvinov did not publicly identify the source of his knowledge of the secret protocol, but his speech contains a curious allusion to

code

breaking:

It is not surprising that it is assumed by many that the German-Japanese agreement is written in a special code in which anti-communism means something entirely different from the dictionary meaning of this word, and that people

decipher this code in different ways. 24

For his assistance to Soviet sigint Krivitsky was recommended for the Order of Lenin, though he had yet to receive his award when he defected in the following autumn. 25

The

success of the joint

OGPU/Fourth Department

sigint unit in

breaking British diplomatic codes and ciphers during the 1930s also

owed much

to assistance

from espionage. The OGPU's

of the Foreign Office resulted from what has

first

penetration

become known

in intelli-

gence tradecraft as a "walk-in." In 1929 a cipher clerk in the Foreign Office

Communications Department, Ernest Holloway Oldham, then

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

182

accompanying a British trade delegation in Paris, walked into the Soviet Embassy, gave his name as Scott and asked to see the military attache. He was seen instead by an OGPU officer, Vladimir Voynovich, who introduced himself as "Major Vladimir." Oldham announced that he worked for the Foreign Office and had with him a British diplomatic cipher, which he offered to sell for $2,000 U.S. Voynovich took the cipher and disappeared into an adjoining room, where he had it photographed. Possibly suspecting a provocation, he returned to the waiting

Oldham, put on a show of indignation, threw the cipher into his lap, denounced him as a swindler, and ordered him to leave. 26 The cryptanalysts in the OGPU/Fourth Department sigint unit quickly identified Oldham's cipher as genuine. Moscow Center reproved Voynovich for failing to give Scott money to establish a connection with him, ordered him to be given the $2,000 he had asked for, and insisted that contact be reestablished.

the

To Voynovich's embarrassment,

OGPU officer who had followed Oldham back to his Paris lodging

had noted the wrong address, and could not trace him. It took long, painstaking inquiries by Hans Galleni, a Dutch-based OGPU illegal known to his agents as Hans, before Oldham was tracked down in London in 1930. 27 Galleni met him one evening in Cromwell Road on his way back from work, addressed him by name, and made a short prepared speech: "I regret that we didn't meet in Paris. I know of the grave error made by Major Vladimir. He has since been removed and punished.

I

have come to give you what

is

rightfully yours."

Then

Galleni thrust an envelope into Oldham's hand, crossed the road, and

disappeared into a crowd of office workers returning home. Bystanders, seeing

Oldham clutch at his chest and his knees crumple, came to his Oldham stammered his embarrassed thanks, picked himself

assistance.

up,

and went on

When

his

way.

he opened the envelope at

home he found

that

it

con-

tained $2,000 and details of a further rendezvous with Galleni. There is

some evidence

that

Oldham went

to the rendezvous intending to

OGPU. But Galleni persuaded him to accept more money and provide further information on Foreign Office ciphers, security procedures, and his colleagues in the Communications Department. Though Galleni tried to encourage Oldham by taking him and

break off contact with the

his wife to expensive restaurants, the strain of the

double life gradually proved too much. In September 1933 Oldham was found unconscious

on the kitchen floor of his house in Pembroke Gardens, was rushed to a hospital, and pronounced dead on arrival. An inquest found that he

Sigint,

had taken

his

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

life,

183

while of "unsound mind," by "coal gas suffocation."

Galleni returned to the Continent.

OGPU

The

used the information supplied by

Oldham on

personnel of the Communications Department as the basis of a

the

new

Two OGPU illegals were sent to Geneva, where sevOldham's colleagues were working as cipher clerks with the British delegation to the League of Nations. One of the illegals, a former Russian sailor who had lived in the United States, proved so inept that the delegation accurately suspected him of being a Soviet spy. The other illegal, Henri Christian (Han) Pieck, a successful and convivial Dutch artist fired by enthusiasm for the Comintern, was run at different times by Hans Galleni (who had controlled Oldham), by the ill-fated Ignace Poretsky (liquidated in 1937), and by Teodor Maly (of whom more later). Under their direction Pieck used his considerable charm to such good effect in Geneva that he became a popular figure with a wide circle of British officials and journalists. He invited several of the cipher clerks to stay at his house in The Hague, lavished hospitality on them, and 28 lent them money. The man whom he selected as most suitable for recruitment was Captain John Herbert King, who had joined the Communications Department as a "temporary clerk" in 1934 (a job without pension 29 rights). He was estranged from his wife, had an American mistress, and found it difficult to live within his modest income. Pieck cultivated King with great patience as well as skill. On one occasion Pieck and his wife took King and his mistress for an expensive touring holiday in Spain, staying in the best hotels. Mrs. Pieck later described the whole holiday as a "real ordeal," and King and his mistress "incredibly boring." 30 Han Pieck made no attempt to recruit King in Geneva, but waited till he returned to the Foreign Office Communications Department in 1935, then visited him in London. Even then Pieck concealed his connection with the NKVD. Instead he told King that a Dutch banker who was anxious for inside information on international relations could make them both a lot of money if King would supply it. King agreed. recruiting drive.

eral of

To British

give himself a legitimate base in Britain, Pieck invited a

shop

fitter

named Conrad Parlanti, whom he had met through him in setting up a decorating business

the cipher clerks, to join with for

which he would provide the capital. Parlanti agreed and the two took over a house in Buckingham Gate. Pieck kept a floor for his use, which included a locked room where he photographed the

men own

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

184

documents supplied by King. 31

A file seen by Gordievsky indicates that

some of the documents were considered so important that they were shown to Stalin himself. They included telegrams from the British embassy ers.

in Berlin reporting

meetings with Hitler and other Nazi lead-

32

In October 1935 another and ultimately even agent, first

Donald Maclean, entered the Foreign

more important Soviet Maclean was the

Office.

of a group of British agents recruited at graduation from

Cam-

bridge University or soon after to succeed in penetrating Whitehall's corridors of power.

The

KGB still considers the five leading Cambridge

it has ever recruited. During World War they became known as "the London Five" (by then all were run from the London residency) or simply as "the Five." After the release of the film The Magnificent Seven, they became known 33 in the First Chief Directorate as "the Magnificent Five." The first two of the Five to be identified publicly were Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who defected to Moscow in 1951. Kim Philby was christened the Third Man by the British media after his defection in 1963. The Fourth Man, Anthony Blunt, was unmasked in 1979. During the 1980s

moles the ablest group of foreign agents the Second

the media hunt for the Fifth

ended tity,

the

Man

in a series of blind alleys

followed a variety of false

and mistaken

identifications.

trails that

His iden-

discovered by Gordievsky while preparing the classified history of

FCD

Third Department,

is

revealed in this chapter for the

first

time.

Unlike Oldham and King, who sold Foreign Office secrets for money, the motives of the Magnificent Five were ideological. The bait that

drew them

into

work

KGB was anti-fascism after the Nazi

for the

conquest of power in Germany. Anthony Blunt explained his recruitment thus after his exposure in 1979: In the mid- 1930s poraries that the

it

seemed to

me and to many of my contem-

Communist Party and Russia

constituted

the only firm bulwark against fascism, since the Western

democracies were taking an uncertain and compromising attitude towards

Germany.

I

was persuaded by Guy Burgess

could best serve the cause of anti-fascism by joining

that

I

him

in his

work

for the Russians. 34

own

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

185

A majority of Cambridge undergraduates in the mid-thirties were apathetically Conservative.

Though

the Conservatives had the largest po-

clubs in Oxford and Cambridge, they appeared intellectually moribund with a general distaste for campaigning zeal. A writer in the Cambridge Review noted at the beginning of 1934: litical

Political activity in the older universities

during the

last

few

years has been largely confined to the Socialists, and, to an increasing degree, to Communists.

.

.

.

The Russian

experi-

ment has aroused very great interest within the universities. It is felt to be bold and constructive, and youth, which is always impatient of the cautious delays and obstruction of its elders,

is

disposed to regard sympathetically (often irrespec-

tive of political opinion) this

and

political order.

attempt to found a

new

social

35

The growing sympathy among undergraduate idealists for "the Russian

much to do with events in Britain as with events What Kim Philby considered "the real turning point*' in his own political development came, as for many young Soviet sympathizexperiment" had as in Russia.

ers,

with "the demoralization and rout of the Labour Party in 1931."

The

Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald in Government in August 1931 was followed by Labour's rout at the polls two months great "betrayal" by the

agreeing to head a Conservative-dominated National

later.

To It

Philby:

seemed incredible that the [Labour] party should be so which reaction could

helpless against the reserve strength

mobilise in time of

crisis.

More important

still,

the fact that

a supposedly sophisticated electorate had been stampeded by the cynical propaganda of the day threw serious doubt on the validity

of the assumptions underlying democracy as a

whole. 36

While Labour had

lost its

way

in the depression, Russia

midst of the great economic transformation of the

first

was

in the

Five Year Plan.

The Magnificent Five were seduced not by the brutal reality of Stalin's Russia but by a myth image of the socialist millennium: a workerpeasant state courageously building a new society free from the social

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

186

snobbery of the British class system. This myth image was so powerful that it

it

proved capable of surviving even

visits to

seduced. Malcolm Muggeridge, perhaps the

Russia by those

Moscow during the mid-thirties, wrote of the radical who came from Britain to Stalin's Russia: nalists in

Their delight in

all

whom

best of the British jour-

pilgrims

they saw and were told, and the expres-

sion they gave to this delight, constitute unquestionably one

of the wonders of our age. There were earnest advocates of the

humane

killing of cattle

headquarters of the

OGPU

who

looked up at the massive

with tears of gratitude in their

eyes, earnest advocates of proportional representation

eagerly assented Proletariat

when

who

the necessity for a Dictatorship of the

was explained

to them, earnest

clergymen

who

reverently turned the pages of atheistic literature, earnest pacifists

who watched

delightedly tanks rattle across

Red

Square and bombing planes darken the sky, earnest townplanning specialists

who

stood outside overcrowded ram-

shackle tenements and muttered: "If only like this in

we had something

England!" The almost unbelievable credulity of

these mostly university-educated tourists astonished even Soviet officials used to handling foreign visitors. 37

The American correspondent in Moscow William same naivete among American visitors to Stalin's They

are wildly enthusiastic over

logical; visit

all

White noted the

Russia:

they see but not always

they were enthusiastic before they

only doubly convinces them.

C.

A

came and

their

schoolteacher from

Brooklyn was on a tour of one of the newspaper plants. She saw a machine which did wonders with the paper that was it. "Really, that is remarkable," she commented. "Such an amazing invention could be produced only in a country like yours, where labor is free, unexploited and working for one end. I shall write a book about what I have seen." She was a trifle embarrassed when she walked to the rear and saw the sign "Made in Brooklyn, N.Y." 38

fed to

For the Magnificent

Five, however, the

against fascism in the ranks of the

heady idealism of a secret war International was an

Communist

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

187

even more powerful inducement than sympathy for the Soviet Union in

drawing them into espionage for the

NKVD. The anti-fascist crusade

Cambridge moles was mounted by Munzenberg, the great virtuoso of Comintern propaganda and originator in the 1920s of the "Innocents' Clubs" designed to "organize that led to the recruitment of the Willi

Communist-dominated front organizations. 39 During the Nazi anti-Communist witch hunt that followed the burning of the Reichstag, the German parliament building, on February 27, 1933, blamed by the Nazis on the Communists, Munzenberg was forced to move his headquarters from Berlin to Paris. 40 There in June 1933 he founded what proved to be the most influential of all the Innocents' Clubs, the World Committee for the Relief of the Victims of German the intellectuals" in

Fascism.

The

who worked

writer Arthur Koestler,

for

it,

noted that, as

usual with the Innocents' Clubs, "great care was taken that no nist

—except a few

busse and

J.

B. S.

known names, such

internationally

Haldane

Commu-

as Henri Bar-

—should be connected with the Committee."

The French section was led by a distinguished Hungarian emigre, Count Karolyi. The international chairman was a naive British Labour peer, Lord Marley. The great physicist Albert Einstein also agreed to join the committee,

Their participation

and soon found himself described as "president." made the committee appear a nonparty philan-

thropic organization. In reality, wrote Koestler later, the Paris secretarthat ran it was "a purely Communist caucus, headed by Munzenberg and controlled by the Comintern. Munzenberg himself worked in iat

.

room

.

.

World Committee's premises, but no outsider ever learned about this. It was as simple as that." 41 From his Paris base Munzenberg organized the publication in August 1933 of the most effective piece of propaganda in Comintern history, the Brown Book on the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the a large

in the

Reichstag.* 2 Quickly translated into over twenty languages ranging

from Japanese to Yiddish, the Brown Book became,

in

Koestler's

phrase, "the bible of the anti-fascist crusade." Koestler claimed, with

some exaggeration,

that

of any pamphlet since

it

"probably had the strongest political impact

Tom Paine's Common Sense demanded indepen-

dence for the American colonies a century and a half earlier." 43

According to the

title

page, the

book was "prepared by the

for the Victims of

German Fascism (PRESIDENT:

EINSTEIN) with an introduction by

LORD MARLEY." "My name,"

World Committee

wrote Einstein, "appeared in the English and French editions as

if I

had

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

188

it. That is not true. I did not write a word of it." But since it was all in a good cause, the great physicist decided not to complain. "The fact that I did not write it," he said genially, "does not matter." 44 Lord Marley's introduction, written from the "House of Lords, London SW1" gave the fraudulent volume an air of establishment respectability sensationand scrupulous veracity. "We have not used the most al .. documents," the noble lord assured his readers. "Every statement made in this book has been carefully verified and is typical of a number of similar cases." 45 Lord Marley was naive enough to have believed his

written

.

.

.

.

own

introduction.

Like most successful deceptions, the Brown Book contained a

But fact, as Koestler later acknowledged, and "brazen bluff' by "the Comintern's intelligence apparat." Most of the writing, according to Koestler, was done

significant element of fact.

was mixed with

forgeries

by Miinzenberg's chief

assistant,

Katz was a Czech Jew and,

like

Otto Katz

{alias

Andre Simone). 46

Munzenberg, an unconventional, coswho seemed far

mopolitan Central European of great personal charm,

removed from the doctrinaire Stalinism expected of Communist Party During the 1920s Katz had built up a remarkable range of contacts in publishing, journalism, the theater and the film industry. "In Hollywood," wrote Babette Gross, Miinzenberg's "life partner," "he charmed German emigre actors, directors, and writers. Katz had an extraordinary fascination for women, a quality which greatly helped him in organizing committees and campaigns." 47 Koestler agreed that Katz was "attractive to women, particularly to the middle-aged, wellintentioned, politically active type, and used them adroitly to smooth

apparatchiks.

his path":

One

of Otto's tasks was ... to spy on Willy for the apparat.

Willy knew this and did not care. Willy needed Otto, but he hardly bothered to disguise his contempt for him. of

all his

... In spite

seediness, Otto was, paradoxically, a very likeable

human

being. He had the generosity of the adventurer and he could be warmhearted, spontaneous and helpful so long

—

as

it

did not conflict with his interests. 48

In writing the

Brown Book, Katz was

assisted

by Alexander Abusch,

former editor of the German Communist Party

(KPD) newspaper Rote postwar East German government,

Fahne and later a minister in the and by a series of other Communist journalists. 49 Attempts by outsiders

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

to identify the exact composition of the

of the Victims of German

Book were

found

for the Relief

Fascism responsible for producing the

invariably frustrated.

visiting Paris

World Committee

189

Brown

A curious American radical journalist

his inquiries trapped inside

an unhelpfully circular

explanation:

I

tried

asked

hard to find out

"Who

is

who

constituted the

Committee and

"We are." I made "A group of people

the Committee?" Answer:

further enquiry:

"Who are we?"

Answer:

men." "What group The answer came back: "Our Committee." 50

interested in defending these innocent

of people?"

The Brown Book countered the Nazi allegation that the Reichstag fire was the result of a Communist conspiracy with the equally fraudulent but more convincing claim that it was a Nazi plot. Forged documents were used to demonstrate that Marinus van der Lubbe, the Dutch was part of a plot devised by the Nazi in which a group of storm troopers had entered the Reichstag through an underground passage that connected it with the official residence of its Nazi president, Hermann Goering, started the blaze, and made their escape by the same route. The fictitious conspiracy was enlivened with sexual scandal based on bogus evidence that van der Lubbe was involved with leading Nazi arsonist responsible for the

fire,

master propagandist Joseph Goebbels

homosexuals. 51

The basic hypothesis of the Brown Book,

instantly popular with

most anti-Nazis and subsequently embellished with further fabrications, was accepted until 1962, when the West German journalist Fritz Tobias demolished both Nazi and Communist conspiracy theories and

demonstrated that

in all probability

van der Lubbe had

set fire to the

Reichstag single-handedly in the vain hope of provoking a popular rising.

52

Tobias's revelations proved

unwelcome

in the

German Demo-

which sponsored further forgeries to reestablish the Brown Book version of events. During the 1970s the most skillful of these forgeries, fabricated by a Croat emigre, Edouard Calic, successfully deceived an International Committee for Scientific Research on the Causes and Consequences of the Second World War, subsidized by the foreign ministry and press office of the Federal Republic and including some distinguished West German historians, until these documents too were conclusively exposed as forgeries. 53 Miinzenberg used the Brown Book as the basis for one of his cratic Republic,

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

190

most ambitious

stunts. In the

summer

gained approval from the Comintern

of 1933 he visited

Moscow and

OMS for the creation of an Inter-

Committee of Jurists composed of sympathetic non-Communists who would pronounce with apparent judicial impartiality on the causes of the Reichstag fire and find the Nazis guilty. 54 On his return to Paris Munzenberg drew up plans with Katz for a Legal Inquiry into national

London shortly before the Communist fellow conspirators

the Burning of the Reichstag, to be held in trial

of van der Lubbe and his alleged

opened

in Leipzig.

—

The chairman of the "Legal Inquiry" or "Counter-Trial" as it came to be called was a leading British fellow traveler, D. N. Pritt, K.C., a prominent Labour M.P. and barrister who later defended Stalin's show trials against the "unscrupulous abuse" they received in

—

England and was eventually expelled from the Labour Party

for sup-

porting the Soviet invasion of Finland. 55 Pritt's colleagues on the Inter-

Committee of Jurists were Arthur Garfield Hays, an American champion of civil liberties; Georg Branting, son of Sweden's first Socialist prime minister; Maitres Moro-Giafferi and Gaston Bergery from France; Valdemar Huidt from Denmark; Dr. Betsy Bakker-Nort from the Netherlands; and Maitre Pierre Vermeylen from Belgium. Otto Katz traveled to London to organize the Counter-Trial. Foreign Office files reveal that though Katz was on the MI 5 Black List as a "red-hot communist," he was allowed into Britain "as the result of intervention by Mr. Arthur Henderson [the former foreign secretary] and other members of the Labour Party" sympathetic to the CounterTrial, who were probably unaware of Katz's links with Soviet intelligence. Despite MI5 opposition, the Home Office allowed Katz to make a second visit later in the year "rather than face Labour Parliamentary] Q[uestion]s." 56 Once in London, Katz stayed hidden behind the scenes as, in Koestler's words, "the invisible organizer of the Committee." But national

he succeeded

brilliantly in cloaking the

Counter-Trial in an aura of

establishment respectability.

On September 13 a reception was held for the international by Lord Marley and Sidney Bernstein in the prestigious Mayfair surroundings of the Hotel Washington. 57 The Counter-Trial opened next day at Lincoln's Inn in the Law Society's Court Room, thus giving

jurists

the proceedings the appearance of a British

Crown

Court.

An

opening

address by the Labour lawyer Sir Stafford Cripps, K.C., later a wartime

ambassador to Russia and postwar chancellor of the exchequer, emphasized that "none of the lawyers on the Commission belonged to the

Sigint,

political party

many."

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

[i.e.,

191

the Communists] of the accused persons in Ger-

58

Katz was understandably pleased with himself. The Counterlater boasted, had become "an unofficial tribunal whose man59 date was conferred by the conscience of the world." Katz succeeded in combining respectability with melodrama. Witnesses came in disguise. The court doors were locked so that no one could leave while Trial,

he

the chairman, claimed

sensitive witnesses

were giving evidence.

dramatically that

Ramsay MacDonald's National Government was

Pritt,

60 trying to obstruct the Counter-Trial.

As was a

the carefully staged proceedings dragged on, however, there

slight air of anticlimax.

Wells became bored.

Some prominent sympathizers

And though

like

H. G.

the jurists do not seem to have

suspected the dubious origins of some of the evidence presented to

them, they were

less

emphatic

in their

Katz had hoped. Instead of ending

conclusion than Miinzenberg and

in a ringing denunciation of the

Nazi

more cautiously that "grave the Reichstag was set on fire by, or

regime, the Counter-Trial concluded

grounds existed for suspecting that

on behalf

of,

leading personalities of the National Socialist Party." 61

Such mild disappointment as Miinzenberg and Katz may have felt

with the verdict of the Counter-Trial was quickly dispelled by the

trial itself at

Leipzig,

Nazis. Despite the

which turned into a propaganda

German judge's

of some of the key Nazi witnesses defendant, Georgi Dimitrov, the

efforts to assist

disaster for the

them, the evidence

The leading Communist Bulgarian former head of the Cominfell

to pieces.

and a future Bulgarian ComGoering became so irate at the collapse of the Nazi case that he lost his temper and shouted 62 at Dimitrov, "You wait till I get you out of the power of this court!" Van der Lubbe, who had insisted from the start that he was solely responsible, was found guilty and executed. All the Communist defendants were cleared. The public collapse of the Nazi conspiracy theory in open court served to reinforce the alternative Communist conspiracy theory of the Brown Book. A Second Brown Book was produced by Miinzenberg, Katz, and their collaborators to exploit Nazi embarrassment at the Leipzig Trial, amend the less-convincing parts of the first edition, and include further fabrications. 63 tern

Western European Bureau

munist prime minister, made a

in Berlin

brilliant defense.

Like Munzenberg's earlier Innocents' Clubs, the Reichstag Fire campaign was designed to serve the purposes of the Comintern and Soviet

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

192

intelligence apparat as well as to

win a propaganda

victory.

Though

his

primary aim was to conquer public opinion, he also hoped to lure some

war against fascism under Comintern direction. Preparations for a recruiting drive among young British intellectual "innocents" began at the same time as preparations for the Counter-Trial. One of Munzenberg's targets was Cambridge UniverBritish intellectuals into a secret

sity.

His emissary, Countess Karolyi,

later recalled the naive enthusi-

asm she found among Cambridge Communists when Munzenberg

sent

her to collect funds for the Counter-Trial and Dimitrov's defense in Leipzig:

remember my trip to Cambridge in the rickety car of a young communist undergraduate who, on the way, explained to me dolefully that it was imperative, though most regrettaI

ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge should be razed to the ground when the Proletarian Dictatorship was proclaimed. For centuries, he said, they had been the symbols of bourgeois privilege. He seemed suspicious of my genuine revolutionary spirit when

ble, that the beautiful

I

expressed

my

doubts as to the necessity for demolition. In

Cambridge we drove

where whiteflannelled undergraduates were playing tennis on perfectly kept green courts. We were received most enthusiastically. It was odd to see students of such a famous university, obvito

one of the

colleges,

ously upper-class, with well-bred accents, speak about Soviet

Russia as the land of promise. 64

Munzenberg's main contact in Cambridge, who probably arranged Countess Karolyi's visit, was Maurice Dobb, an economics don at

Pembroke College (and about Dobb's

later at Trinity).

Communism. On

There was nothing covert

the founding of the

of Great Britain in 1920 he became probably the

Communist Party

first

British

academic

and he made Union extolling the achievements of Soviet society. In 1925 King George V demanded to know why such a well-known Communist was allowed to indoctrinate the young. But though Dobb attracted the attention of the Special Branch and MI5, it was as an open Communist propagandist and militant in front organizations such as Munzenberg's League Against Imperialism, rather than because of any suspected to carry a Party card,

frequent speeches at the Cambridge

involvement with Soviet intelligence. In 1931, together with

Roy

Pas-

Sigint,

cal,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

a young modern-languages

don

at

193

Pembroke, Dobb founded the

Communist cell at Red House, his home in Chesterton Dobb was naive as well as militant. In proselytizing for Communism and the Comintern's secret war against international fasuniversity's

first

Lane. 65 But

cism,

it is

quite possible that he failed to realize that he

as a talent spotter for the

was

also acting

KGB.

The bait devised by Munzenberg to lure Cambridge innocents and other young British intellectuals into working for Soviet intelligence was the heroic example allegedly being set by German workers in

forming secret Funfergruppen ("groups [or "rings"] of five") to

launch a proletarian counterattack against Nazism. The phrase "group (or "ring") of five" later

became confused with "the Magnificent Five"

and other descriptions applied by the KGB to the five most successful Cambridge moles during and after the Second World War. The origins of the Funfergruppen, however, went back to the revolutionary under-

ground in Tsarist Russia. The first ring of five had been formed in 1 869 by the student revolutionary Sergei Nechayev,

whom

the model for Peter Verkhovensky in The Devils.

saw him

Dostoyevsky made Though Dostoyevsky

and

as a psychopath, the conspirators of the People's Will

their

Bolshevik successors regarded Nechayev as a revolutionary visionary. 66

During the tense preceded Hitler's

rise to

final

revived the rings of five. In the ing

its

Weimar Republic, which German Communist Party (KPD) summer of 1932 the KPD began replacyears of the

power, the

existing semi-open cells of ten to thirty

members with

Funfergruppen, so called in honor of Nechayev. Not five

had exactly

five

all

secret

the groups of

members. Only the leader of each group was

supposed to know the identity and addresses of the other members; and he alone had the authority to make contact with the next

level in the

Party hierarchy. In the face of the challenge from Hitler the reality, as

KPD

behaved

in

Koestler discovered, like "a castrated giant." 67 Before the

Nazi takeover it concentrated its fire not on the Nazi Party but on its main rival on the left, the socialist SPD. After the Nazi takeover, many Communists switched their support to Hitler. The bulk of what Communist resistance survived in the Nazi Third Reich was not an organized underground but an ill-organized opposition among the badly paid construction workers of Hitler's labor army. 68

however, disguised the reality of the

The Comintern,

KPD's ignominious

failure to

counter the Nazi challenge by claiming that the Party had gone under-

ground, and that the Funfergruppen had created "a new subterranean

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

194

revolutionary

The

Germany

.

.

.

dogging Hitler's every footstep." 69

was Semyon

chief propagandist of the groups of five

OGPU

and associate of MiinzenLondon under the alias Ernst Henri (later Henry or Ghenri). In August and September 1933 he wrote three articles entitled "The Revolutionary Movement in Nazi Germany" for the leading British left-wing weekly, the New Statesman. The first, subtitled "The Groups of Five (TunfergrupNikolayevich Rostovsky, an

berg,

who had

illegal

established himself as a journalist in

pen')," revealed the existence of the groups publicly for the

and made extravagant claims There

is

first

time

for their success:

perhaps no other example in history of a secret

revolutionary

movement with

a completely equipped organi-

zation and an effective influence extending over the whole

country, being able to develop in so short a time.

groups of

almost

try;

important

The groups liberals,

buried

five

cover practically the whole of

all

.

.

the factories and the majority of the

offices are

These indus-

more

honeycombed with them.

many former socialists, republicans, have who, "under Communist leadership

allegedly contained

and Catholics

all

.

German

previous differences and pursue only one policy

.

.

.

—anti-Fas-

cism." In addition to printing clandestine propaganda, coordinating

demonstrations, and collecting intelligence on the "Hitler Terror," the five had succeeded in infiltrating the Nazi labor movement and were preparing to paralyze the system from within. The example of the Funfergruppen thus demonstrated the need for infiltration and intelligence gathering in the war against fascism. Nazism's secret networks, argued Henri, were already so powerful and widespread that they formed a covert "fascists' international." It followed that anti70 fascists also must organize secretly as well as openly. Wildly exaggerated though it was, Henri's romantic account of groups of five engaged in a proletarian crusade against Nazi tyranny struck so deep a chord in the New Statesman and many of its readers that they suspended their disbelief. The editor, Kingsley Martin, insisted that Henri's "facts" were "not open to question." 71 In March 1934 Henri spelled out his arguments in greater detail 11 in Hitler over Europe?, a book twice reprinted over the next few months. It would, said The Times, "make the democrat's flesh posi73 Henri's message in this and later writings was that the tively creep."

groups of

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

choice confronting his readers was simple and stark

195

—between Berlin

and Moscow: "In the modern opposing forces and on the verge of its final transformation, there is no such thing as political and social impartiality, nor can there be." It was 74 sheer liberal escapism to look for a middle way. In private meetings world, torn between [these] gigantic

with sympathizers, Henri put the same point more personally.

"You

75 English," he would say, "are such liberal do-gooders."

The decent

values of liberal democracy were thus plausibly

The

portrayed simply as one facet of appeasement.

implication of

Henri's message was that anti-fascist British intellectuals, fascism amounted to ity" (a

key word

more than mere words, should

if

their anti-

display "solidar-

Miinzenberg's lexicon for intellectual innocents)

in

German workers by joining in their secret war To Guy Burgess in particular, the most flamboyant of

with the oppressed against fascism.

Cambridge's young Communists, sage. his

this

was an

irresistibly

According to one of those who knew him, Burgess

own

"light blue ring of five."

Hitler over Europe?

set

heady mesout to form

76

was reviewed

in the

New

Statesman

in

April 1934 by Brian Howard, one of Burgess's closest friends and, like

Though Evelyn Waugh, quoting Lady Caroline Lamb on Byron, called Howard "mad, bad and dangerous to know," he was rapidly becoming an influential him, a predatory Old Etonian Marxist homosexual.

Howard eulogized Hitler over Europe? as "probably the book on the Third Reich that has appeared in English": "Ernst Henri's book should be read at once by everyone who is seriously

literary figure.

best

interested in understanding the real bases of Hitlerism. ... It discloses, for the first time, the

on

dynamics of the Nazi movement." Howard went

to endorse Henri's analysis of "the celebrated Revolutionary

Groups

of Five," and ended with a rallying cry to English anti-fascists to "band

themselves together" without delay. 77 Henri's career in Soviet intelligence spanned half a century,

beginning as an

OGPU illegal between the wars and ending in the Fifth

Directorate of Andropov's 1933, Henri later

was instructed

during the

KGB. Having helped 78

to

to recruit Burgess in

keep a watchful eye on him a generation

final alcoholic

years of Burgess's

his death in 1963. Unsurprisingly,

Moscow

exile before

Henri has always refused to discuss

publicly the details of his intelligence career. But in 1988 he at last

admitted to a Western writer that he had talent-spotted for the

Cambridge Dobb. 79

at

in the

KGB

1930s and had kept in touch with both Burgess and

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

196

When

Burgess met him for the

thirty, short, slim,

first

time, Henri

was not yet

with a heavy mustache but already going bald. Like

Munzenberg and Katz, he was an engaging, cosmopolitan quite unlike the doctrinaire, ily

taking over

Henri a decade

much later

of the

narrow-minded

NKVD.

when he was

Stalinists

Edith Cobbett,

extrovert

who were steadwho worked for

the editor of the Soviet

News

in

London, found him "really a charismatic personality," who was always fun to be with: "I think I laughed during the period I worked with him as much as I've laughed at any time in my life." Henri preferred Picasso

and Matisse

to the officially favored artists of Socialist realism, dressed

and enjoyed Westerns. He was also capable of an irreverence which, though it must have attracted Burgess, would have been unthinkable in the Soviet Union. After reading a typically tedious series of Stalinist speeches, Henri once said to Edith Cobbett: in

well-made English

"Wouldn't

it

be fun

suits,

if

somebody

said 'Sod Stalin!' for a change?"

But Henri was also an idealistic Communist and a Russian patriot with a tremendous pride in Soviet achievements and the eco-

nomic transformation wrought by the Five Year Plans. 80 Throughout his long career in journalism and Soviet intelligence Henri preached the need to "stop underestimating the revolutionary moods and powers of the youth": "For nearly two centuries bourgeois society has really feared only the working class. It now finds it has to fear another force young people who until recently were ordered to listen and do as they are told." Writing in 1982, Henri criticized "both Right and Left extremists" for playing on the emotions of "susceptible" students. 81 Half a century earlier he played with some success himself on the same emotions. He admitted in 1988 that he was "astonished" that his talent spotting in Cambridge for the KGB had not led to his arrest in the

—

1930s.

82

Though

four of the Magnificent Five and several less celebrated moles

were recruited while

still at Cambridge, the first and most famous of them entered the KGB by a slightly different route. Harold Adrian Russell ("Kim") Philby was born in India on New Year's Day 1912, the son of Harry St. John and Dora Philby. His father, then a civil servant of the British Raj, went on to become a celebrated Arabist. Like his son, who adored him, St. John Philby moved easily in two quite different worlds. He wrote for The Times, stood twice for Parliament, was a habitue of London clubland, and tried never to miss a test match. But he was equally at home dressed as an Arab, converted to Islam, and

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

took a Saudi slave

girl as his

197

second wife. 83 Like Kim, though on a far

John betrayed British secrets to a foreign power for which he felt a stronger loyalty. Having conceived an intense admiration for Ibn Saud, he passed to him classified documents on the

more modest

scale, St.

Middle East. 84

Kim

went both to

his father's old school, Westminster,

he was a King's Scholar, then

in

where

October 1929 to his father's Cambridge

which was also the college of Anthony Blunt and (from 1930) of Guy Burgess. One of Philby's first acts on going up to Trinity was to join the Cambridge University Socialist Society (CUSS), though

college, Trinity,

two years his involvement in it was limited to attending meetings. During those two years he read history, did little work, and gained only third-class honors in the examination for Part I of the Cambridge

for

Historical Tripos.

In October 1931 he changed to economics for the second part

of his degree course. His change coincided with a landslide election victory by

Ramsay MacDonald's National Government, which reto a rump of only fifty-two seats. "It was

duced the Labour opposition the

Labour

disaster of 1931," said Philby later,

"which

first set

me

Labour Party." He took a more active part in the now Communist-dominated CUSS, becoming its treasurer during his last year at Cambridge in 1932-33. But it was not until his last term at Trinity, in the early summer of 1933, that Philby threw off what he called his "last doubts." Two experiences were probably decisive in Kim's final conversion. The first was a visit seriously to thinking about possible alternatives to the

to Berlin in

March 1933 during his last Easter vacation, shortly after when he witnessed at firsthand Hitler's

the burning of the Reichstag,

persecution of the

KPD

and the setting-up of the Nazi police

Philby returned to Cambridge for his

final

state.

term burning to play his part

in the fight against fascism.

In Cambridge the most importance influence on him was MauDobb, one of the dons who set him economics essays and discussed each with him individually for an hour at a time, probably prolonging the discussion when the hour was up to talk about politics. To his disciples Dobb emphasized the role of the Comintern in the struggle against fascism. Another Trinity undergraduate who fell under Dobb's spell, V. G. Kiernan, wrote later: "We belonged to the era of the Third International, genuinely international at least in spirit, when the Cause stood high above any national or parochial claims." Philby graduated in June 1933 with upper second-class honors rice

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

198

economics and "the conviction that Communism." He later revealed that on

in

my

life

his last

must be devoted to day in Cambridge he

went to seek Dobb's advice on how best to work for the cause: "He gave me an introduction to a communist group in Paris, a perfectly legal and open group." The group, though Philby declined to identify it, was almost certainly Munzenberg's World Committee for the Relief of Victims of German Fascism.

It is

quite possible that in directing Philby

Munzenberg Dobb did not realize that he had begun Kim's recruitment as a Soviet agent. He was sufficiently naive to have thought simply in terms of enlisting Philby in the Comintern's secret war against to

international fascism.

After making contact with Munzenberg's apparat in Paris,

Philby was "passed ... on to a communist underground organization in

Vienna." 85 His contact address was the house of Israel and Gisella

Kohlmann, Polish Jews who had arrived in Vienna shortly before the World War. Israel was a minor civil servant who, together with

First

his wife, spent

became

most of

his spare time in

their paying guest,

learning

German and working

manns' daughter,

Litzi

Jewish welfare work. Philby

nominally spending his time in Vienna as a freelance journalist.

The Kohl-

Friedmann, a short, vivacious divorcee, was

already working as a Comintern agent. In the course of the winter,

while out for a walk together in the snow, she and Philby became lovers. "I

know

it

sounds impossible," Philby told a

actually quite

warm once you

got used to

later mistress,

it."

"but

it

was

In February 1934 Litzi

became Philby's first wife. By that time she had already introduced him to the Comintern underground. 86 As Philby acknowledged half a century later in an interview a few months before his death, his work in Vienna "caught the attention" of the

OGPU. The

87

to realize Philby's potential as a Soviet agent was the Teodor Maly, whose portrait is among the score of KGB heroes that hang today on the walls of the First Chief Directorate first

great illegal,

Memory Room. The

official

eulogy beneath Maly's portrait cites as his

greatest achievement his role in recruiting

and running Philby and the

Magnificent Five. 88 Slutsky, then head of INO, ascribed Maly's success to his percharm and instinctive tact. He was a large, handsome man nicknamed "der Lange," the tall fellow, within the Comintern underground of Central Europe. The NKVD defector Aleksandr Orlov, no admirer of most of his former colleagues, remembered affectionately Maly's

sonal

Sigint,

"strong,

manly

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

face

his strong exterior

and

large,

199

almost childlike, blue eyes." 89 Beneath

and passionate devotion

to

Comintern

ideals,

some

of his agents sensed an inner vulnerability, which only strengthened their

attachment to him. 90 Maly had

ingly brutal apparatchiks

Great Terror.

little in

common

with the increas-

who came to dominate the NKVD during the

He was Hungarian by

birth

and had been ordained as a

as a chaplain in the

World War. During the war he served Austro-Hungarian army before being taken pris-

oner by the Russians

in the

Catholic priest before the First

Carpathians.

He later told one of his agents:

young men with frozen limbs dying in was moved from one [POW] camp to another and starved along with the other prisoners. We were all covered with vermin and many were dying from typhus. I lost my faith in God and when the revolution broke out I joined the Bolsheviks. I broke with my past completely. I was no longer a Hungarian, a priest, a Christian, even anyone's son. I was just a soldier "missing in action." I became a Communist and have always remained one. I

saw

all

the horrors,

the trenches.

Soon

after

he

left

I

POW

camp, Maly's burning desire

to defend the

Revolution from counterrevolution earned him admission to the

Cheka. The visionary

faith in

an earthly new Jerusalem free from

man by man that replaced his religious faith during the First World War never left him. But it was shaken by the horrors of both the Civil War and collectivization. During the Civil War, he the exploitation of

said later:

Our Red detachments would "clean up" villages exactly the way the Whites did. What was left of the inhabitants, old men, women, children were machine-gunned for having given assistance to the enemy.

of the women.

When

I

I

could not stand the wailing

simply could not.

were being "cleaned up," Maly claimed that he would hands over his ears. Once counterrevolution had been defeated, he seems to have persuaded himself that the horrors of the Civil War were past. With collectivization they returned. "I knew what we were doing to the peasants," Maly admitted, "how many were villages

try to hide with his

deported,

how many were

shot.

And

still I

stayed on.

I still

hoped the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

200

chance would come for

me

to atone for

personally involved in the case of a

what

I

had done." He became

man who had

been sentenced to

death for stealing a small bag of potatoes to feed his starving children.

Maly persuaded

his chief to

to imprisonment. life

recommend

that the sentence be

commuted

He saw the man's wife and told her that her husband's

had been saved. "This case," he

believed,

my

"had become

atone-

ment":

Then

I

had

to

got back the

go away on a two-week assignment.

When

I

"my

case."

I

first

could not find the

thing file.

I I

did was to look for

ran to

my

chief.

He

did not

know

what had happened and both of us started to hunt for the file. We finally found it. Scribbled across it was one word: "Executed."

Next day Maly went

to

INO

and asked

for a foreign posting.

assignment, probably late in 1932, was as an

A

His

first

OGPU illegal in Germany.

few months after the Nazi conquest of power, he moved to Vienna.

His message to his Austrian agent Hede Massing

Kim in

91

Philby also

—was rather

different

—

and no doubt to from that spread by Ernst Henri

England. Instead of stressing, like Henri, the success of the under-

ground war waged by the German workers' Fiinfergruppen, Maly argued that the struggle against Nazism had to be waged chiefly from

beyond the German

We

outside. side."

92

"The only way

to fight fascism

now we must do

it

is

from the

from the out-

In the underground struggle against international fascism

rekindled his his

frontier:

did not succeed inside,

own

Maly

own early Bolshevik idealism, and inspired his agents with Communist International. work for the Comintern in between outlawed Austrian Communists and

vision of the final victory of the

Philby's

first

experience of

illegal

Vienna was as a courier contacts in Hungary, Paris, and Prague. In February 1934 the struggle between left and right in Austria reached what Philby fairly described

The forces of the right-wing Dollfuss government and more extreme street fighters of the Heimwehr (whose founder, Prince Starhemberg, had taken part in Hitler's attempted Munich

as "crisis point."

the even

putsch of 1923) attacked trade-union headquarters, left-wing newspapers, Socialist offices, welfare offices,

even housing complexes.

Two

of

the largest Viennese housing complexes were demolished by artillery

and nine Socialist leaders were strung up in the courtyard of the Supreme Court. If there was one episode that more than any other fire

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

NKVD agent,

it was probaand Socialists smuggling Communists

persuaded Maly of Philby's potential as an bly his courage and ingenuity in

out of the country. The Daily Telegraph correspondent Eric later recalled being visited

I

opened

my

by Philby

wardrobe

201

Gedye

in Vienna:

to select something.

When Kim saw

"Good God, you have seven; I six wounded friends in the sewers The suits were stuffed in a suitcase

several suits there, he cried,

must have them. in

I've got

danger of the gallows."

and, according to Philby, used to smuggle his friends out of this hiding place in the

sewers and across the border into

Czechoslovakia. 93 Philby later admitted to his children that during his time in Vienna he was "given the job of penetrating British intelligence, and told it did not matter how long it took to do the job." 94 It was Maly who gave him that assignment and in May 1934 sent him back to England to pursue it. To act as Philby's controller Maly sent to London an illegal who had worked for him in Vienna, Arnold Deutsch. Deutsch's portrait hangs

today next to Maly's ate.

The

in the

Memory Room

of the First Chief Director-

citation beneath ranks his contribution to the recruitment

and

running of the Cambridge moles as virtually the equal of Maly's. 95

Deutsch was a thirty-year-old Austrian Jew, an

attractive, tal-

European in the Maly and Munzenberg mold. Born the son of a Jewish trader and brought up in an orthodox Jewish quarter of Vienna, he left his secondary school, a Vienna Realgymnasium, in June 1923, a month after his nineteenth birthday. The following autumn he entered the Philosophy Faculty at Vienna University. Despite the Faculty's name, many of its students, like Deutsch, were scientists. Though Deutsch took no first degree equivalent to the B.A. or B.S., his progress was more rapid than the regulations at any British or American university would allow. For four years he concentrated most of his studies in physics and chemistry, also taking courses in philosophy and psychology. He spent his fifth year writing up a Ph.D. thesis entitled "On Silver and Mercury Salts of Amidobenzothiazols and a New Method of Quantitative Silver Analysis." ented, cosmopolitan Central

On

July 19, 1928, less than five years after entering Vienna

University and two months after his twenty-fourth birthday, Deutsch

was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy with distinction. His however, proved controversial. At the first oral examina-

dissertation,

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

202

tion,

when he defended

nounced

it

his thesis,

one of the three examiners pro-

"unsatisfactory"; Deutsch passed by a majority vote.

second oral examination, which covered a broader

field

At the

of knowledge

and determined Deutsch's final grade, the two examiners also disagreed. Professor Schlick awarded him a distinction, Professor Reiniger a pass. tion.

On

the chairman's casting a vote, Deutsch received a distinc-

96

The examiner chiefly ritz Schlick,

responsible for Deutsch's distinction,

founder of the Vienna Circle of philosophers and

Mo-

scientists,

was distinguished as both a physicist and a philosopher. He was assassinated in 1936 by an aggrieved student, whose thesis on ethics he had failed. A decade earlier he was probably an important influence on Deutsch, who took his course on ethics in the summer semester of 1926. Schlick equated moral values with feelings of pleasure, and human fulfillment with ecstasy. But to achieve ecstasy in contemporary society he argued that the individual must first endure torment; joy and sorrow together produced a convulsion through which "the whole person is affected to a depth which few impressions can reach." Schlick believed that as civilization progressed it would gradually make it possible for

human

beings to achieve pleasure without suffering. 97

Throughout

his time at

Vienna University, Deutsch described

himself in university documents and his curriculum vitae as Jewish

both by religion (mosaisch) and by ethnic origin lectual progression

(jiidisch).

98

His

intel-

from orthodox Judaism to Marxist materialism

cannot be traced with certainty. But Deutsch's attraction to Schlick's vision of a world in

which joy would replace suffering seems to have in the end overtaken, by his growing commit-

been accompanied, and

ment to the Communist International's vision of a new world order that would free mankind from exploitation and alienation. In the late 1920s he joined the "sex-pol" movement founded by the Viennese Jewish psychologist, Wilhelm Reich, which opened clinics to counsel workers on sexual problems. Deutsch ran the Munster-Verlag which published Reich's work and other "sex-pol" literature. 99 At this stage of his career, Reich was engaged in an ambitious attempt to integrate Freudianism with Marxism. Political and sexual repression, he argued, went together and paved the way for fascism. For a time he hoped that the Soviet Union might be capable of ending both. In 1930 Reich left Vienna for Berlin, where he joined the German Communist Party (KPD). After Hitler's rise to power three years later, he was forced to flee from Germany, returned briefly to Vienna, then left for Scandinavia where

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

203

human

sexual be-

he began a sometimes bizarre research program on

havior which earned him a reputation as "the prophet of the better

orgasm." Deutsch's involvement in the "sex-pol" movement and his role in publishing

some of Reich's work

in

Vienna brought him to the

attention of the anti-pornography section of the Austrian police,

which

began an investigation of

his activities in the spring of 1934, just as

was leaving

100

The

for England.

Chief Di-

citation beneath Deutsch's portrait in the First

Memory Room makes no mention

rectorate

Reich. Instead the Comintern

he

of his association with

records that he entered the OGPU after working for OMS and that his first foreign mission was to Palestine, it

then under a British mandate. In 1933 Deutsch and his wife, Josefine (nee Rubel),

had married

OGPU

in 1929, visited

and

illegal

Moscow. There Deutsch was

he

trained as an

While

his wife as a radio operator.

whom

in

Arnold Deutsch was given the cover name Stefan Lang, but

Moscow in April

1934 he traveled to London under his real name, using his Austrian passport so that he could use his academic credentials to mix in university circles.

101

During

his years in

London, he posed as a "university

He lived at first at temporary addresses, him in 1935 moved to a flat on Lawn Road,

lecturer" carrying out research.

but

when

his wife joined

Hampstead. In

May

1936 Josefine Deutsch gave birth to a daughter,

Ninette Elizabeth. 102

Kim home

in

May

Philby returned to England in

Deutsch's arrival, living at

Hampstead. His

first

first

with his

new

1934, a

month

after

bride Litzi in his mother's

attempt to penetrate Whitehall was an

application to join the civil service. But his

two

—

his

former

Trinity director of studies in economics, Dennis Robertson,

and a

family friend, Donald Robertson (no relation) ing consulted with his fellow referee about

referees

—had

their doubts.

Hav-

Kim's Communist sympa-

him that while they admired his energy and intelligence, they would feel bound to add that his "sense of political injustice might well unfit him for administrative work." Philby withdrew his application and settled instead for a long

thies at

Cambridge, Dennis Robertson wrote to

haul into the establishment.

He

tell

took a job with the City-based

liberal

monthly, Review of Reviews, broke contact with his Cambridge Communist friends, and let it be known that his politics had changed.

Arnold Deutsch,

whom

he knew only as Otto, was sympathetic, en-

couraging, and counseled patience:

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

204

He told me he appreciated my commitment; the question was how best to use me. I should not go off and die on some become a war correspondent for the Daily Worker. There were more important battles for me to fight but I would have to be patient. For the next two years he gave me virtually nothing to do. He was testing my commitment. I would turn up for our meetings with nothing to 103 offer and would receive in return patient encouragement. foreign battlefield or

Deutsch arrived

in

England with instructions

to

make

contact with

Burgess as well as with Philby. 104 Already enthusiastic about the secret

war against fascism waged by the groups of five, Burgess had been suggested for recruitment by both Philby and Henri. A more doctrinaire and less imaginative NKVD control than Deutsch might well have concluded that the outrageous Burgess would be a liability rather than an

Deutsch, however, shared Burgess's contempt for bour-

asset.

from involvement

geois sexual morality. His belief, derived

in

Wilhelm

Reich's "sex-pol" movement, that political and sexual repression went together,

most of

commended him

to all the Magnificent Five

childhood seems to have been both privileged and

He was

—but probably

to Burgess. Despite Burgess's later embellishments, his

all

the son of a naval

commander who

After a year at Eton,

Guy had

fairly conventional.

had married a rich wife.

been sent to the Royal Naval

College at Dartmouth, where he shone both in the classroom and on the playing

field.

Poor eyesight, however,

disqualified

him from pursu-

ing a naval career, and at the age of sixteen he returned to Eton. In his final

year he

won

the Rosebery and Gladstone history prizes as well as

a scholarship in history to Trinity College, Cambridge. But despite an increasingly flamboyant gregariousness, he failed to

win election to

Pop, the exclusive Eton society, possibly because of his indiscreet homosexuality.

Once

remained of

his discretion to the winds.

at

Cambridge

in

October 1930 Burgess threw what

At a time when homosexual between consenting adults in private were still illegal, Burgess openly vaunted the pleasures of "rough trade" with young workingacts even

class males. 105

But Burgess did not confine himself to Cambridge's gay community. His brilliant conversation, good looks, natural gregariousness,

and self-assurance made him one of the most

socially successful under-

graduates of his generation, moving with equal confidence in the exclusive Pitt

Club and the more irreverent Footlights, the student society

Sigint,

devoted to tual gifts,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

satirical revue.

Burgess also possessed formidable

which displayed themselves, however,

fluent generalization

intellec-

in a talent for

in a capacity for

nor the bottle of

life

consumed each day with lunch impeded

apparently effortless progress to torical Tripos in

more

and well-chosen example than

close textual analysis. Neither his diverse social

1921 Liebfraumilch that he

205

first-class

honors

June 1932. Five months

later

his

in Part I of the His-

he was elected to the

Apostles, a secret intellectual discussion group of dons and undergraduates,

which prided

itself

bridge's ablest students.

When Goronwy met Burgess, then on a

(not entirely accurately) on recruiting

Cam-

106

Rees, then a young fellow of All Souls,

visit to

Oxford, in the

summer

first

of 1932, "he had

the reputation of being the most brilliant undergraduate of his day":

Indeed, he did not belie his reputation.

He was

then a scholar

was thought that he had a brilliant acaof him. That evening he talked a good deal about painting and to me it seemed that what he said was both original and sensitive, and, for one so young, to show an unusually wide knowledge of the subject. His conversation had the more charm because he was very good looking in a boyish, athletic, very English way; it seemed of Trinity, and

demic future

it

in front

incongruous that almost everything he said made

it

quite

was a homosexual and a communist. ... It seemed to me that there was something deeply original, something which was, as it were, his very own in everything he had to say. 107

clear that he

By

1932, as Rees discovered at their

Marxist.

By 1933

at the latest

first

meeting, Burgess was a

he had joined the Communist Party,

probably recruited by Maurice Dobb.

One

of his favorite historical

themes, in which he showed greater prescience than most of his lecturers,

was the

inevitable decline of the British Empire.

At the

society of

Indian nationalists in Cambridge, the Majlis, he argued that revolution in the

Empire would open the

British road to socialism. Burgess's sense

of living in the imperial twilight of British capitalism only seemed to

heighten his sense of the pleasures

it

had

to offer.

Yet he also took

increasingly to heart Marx's injunction that, whereas previous philoso-

phers had tried to interpret the world, "the point, however, it."

In his final year as an undergraduate, Burgess

is

to

became an

change

activist.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

206

He helped to organize a successful strike among Trinity College waiters them

against the casual-labor system, which laid most of

off

during

vacations. Enjoying to the full the decadent pleasures of a capitalist

system to whose overthrow he was committed was characteristic of Burgess's youthful capacity to have his cake and eat Increasingly preoccupied by Party

boyant social

life,

Historical Tripos as easily as in Part in the

summer

work

Burgess did not cruise to a I.

During

108

it.

as well as his flam-

first in

Part II of the

his final examinations

of 1933 he suffered from (probably psychosomatic)

and was awarded an aegrotat, an unclassed honors degree awarded to those judged to be of degree standard but unable to com-

illness

plete their papers.

future ahead of

But he was

still

believed to have a brilliant academic

him and began work

for a

geois Revolution" in seventeenth-century

Ph.D. thesis on the "Bour-

England

in the

hope of win-

ning a fellowship at Trinity. 109

One of Burgess's most remarkable gifts even as an undergraduwas his ability to captivate dons as well as fellow students. Goronwy Rees, though a heterosexual who resisted Burgess's attempt to seduce him at their first meeting, immediately made great friends with him. From that moment on it was Burgess who dominated their relationship. Burgess's appeal to a number of homosexual dons was even greater. The distinguished Oxford classicist Maurice Bowra, then dean of Wadham College, with whom Burgess went to stay, was infatuated with him. Rees detected in Burgess "some conscious or unconscious will to dominate. ... He saw himself sometimes as a kind of Figaro figure ever resourceful in the service of others in order to manipulate them to his own ends." Within what Bowra called the "homintern" furtive, often frustrated homosexuals, sometimes guilt-ridden about their illegal sex lives Burgess's power to manipulate was at least partly sexual: ate

—

—

He was

gross and even brutal in his treatment of his lovers,

but his sexual behavior also had a generous aspect. ... At

one

time" or

friends, as

another he went to bed with most of these

he did with anyone

positively repulsive,

many

and

in

who was

willing

of their frustrations and inhibitions.

did not

last for long;

but

affection of those he

and was not

doing so he released them from

Guy had

.

.

.

Such

affairs

the faculty of retaining the

went to bed with, and

also, in

some

curious way, of maintaining a kind of permanent domination

over them. This was strengthened because, long after the

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

Sigint,

affair

sexual

was

207

over, he continued to assist his friends in their

which were often troubled and unsatisfactory, to

lives,

emotional

listen to their

tion of father confessor

and when necessary find To such people he was a combina-

difficulties

suitable partners for them.

and pimp. 110

The member of the "homintern" on whom Burgess had the most enduring influence was Anthony Blunt, from whom he derived some of the insights into painting that so impressed Goronwy Rees at their first meeting. Anthony Blunt, the most senior of Cambridge's Magnificent Five,

was the son of a well-connected Anglican clergyman, the Rever-

end Arthur Vaughan Stanley Blunt, who died at

in

Anthony's third year

Cambridge. Queen Mary, consort of King George V, wrote to his

widow, Hilda: "What a

loss

he

will be.

who was doing such good work on are allowed to live?" saintly father but

when such useless, evil people Anthony had only a distant relationship with his

was deeply attached

brother Wilfrid as a

Why should he have been taken,

earth,

to his mother, described

When

his

"woman of infinite goodness and almost puritanical

simplicity, incapable of telling the whitest of white lies."

British

by

111

Blunt was four, his father had become chaplain at the

embassy

in Paris.

The next

ten years,

which the family spent

almost entirely in France, gave Blunt what he described as "a very

my whole attitude to things was brought up from a very early age, really almost unconsciously, to look at works of art and to regard them as of importance." 112 At school at Marlborough from the age of fourteen, Blunt strong French leaning which has coloured ever since.

I

acquired, according to his close friend and contemporary the poet Louis

MacNeice, a reputation for "precocious knowledge of art and habitual contempt for conservative authority." Blunt himself told a

later genera-

tion of Marlburians:

We

went out of our way to be

used to walk handkerchiefs

down

—

I

irritatingly provocative.

used to wear mine from the strap of

wrist-watch and they could not stop

no

rule preventing

it.

We

the aisle of chapel flaunting our silk

And on

me

my

because there was

Saturday evenings we used to

go upfield to where other boys were playing rounders and infuriate

them by playing catch with a

loured ball right across their game.

large, brightly co-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

208

At Marlborough itself

on an

Neice,

"He

Blunt's disdain for bourgeois convention expressed

told everyone

who would

very low to talk about politics." boys, Blunt

he

left

According to Mac-

aesthetic rather than a political plane.

may

school;

113

he

listen that

.

.

.

considered

it

Despite a number of crushes on other

not yet have been a practicing homosexual by the time

some of

his closest schoolfriends, like

MacNeice, were

heterosexual.

The course

that

bridge, the History of 1960s.

When

would have most

interested Blunt at

Art Tripos, was not introduced

he arrived

at

Cambridge

in 1926,

Cam-

until the early

no English university which Blunt later

yet taught art history; the Courtauld Institute, of

became

director,

was not founded

until 1931.

College with a scholarship in mathematics

ment

man whose main

for a

however, did not

suit

Mathematical Tripos

changed

to

gifts

and

were aesthetic and

end of

at the

culture.

Tripos in 1928, gaining

his first year in

first-class

Part

honors

I

in

Math, of the

June 1927, he

first-class

Modern Languages

of the

which he had German. For the concentrate on French.

French

remainder of his degree course he was able to graduated in 1930 with

I

a subject less remote from his interests

He took

been fluent since childhood) and an upper second

He

114

literary.

him. After second-class honors in Part

modern languages,

in continental art

Blunt entered Trinity

—a considerable achieve-

(in

in

honors in Part

II

of the

Modern

Languages Tripos. 115 In

May

1928 Blunt was elected to the Apostles.

his fellow Apostle, the King's

It

was probably

mathematician Alister Watson

senior scientific officer in the Admiralty and also a

not quite in the same class as the Magnificent Five),

Blunt to the serious study of Marxist theory. 116 But

(later

KGB agent, though who it

first

attracted

was several years

Marxism was translated into political activThe impression formed of the undergraduate Blunt by the young Trinity history don Steven Runciman was shared by many who met

before Blunt's intellectual ism.

him. "He was always, I think, rather pleased with himself. But he could be very good company." During his four years as an undergraduate Blunt also became an active, though discreet, homosexual. 117

The most important the

influence in drawing Blunt into

work

for

KGB was Guy Burgess, who came up to Trinity as an undergradu-

ate just as Blunt began postgraduate research in

Blunt

who two

October 1930.

It

was

years later introduced Burgess into the Apostles. 118

By

then Blunt had been elected to a research fellowship at Trinity for his

work on "The

history of theories of painting with special reference to

Sigint,

Poussin." in

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

The new

research fellow and the

209

new Apostle were frequently

each other's company. Both were sufficiently well-known figures to

be recognized together by an unruly Corpus Christi undergraduate, Valentine Lawford,

as he stood in a

banana

at the

window overlooking

which of three possible the broad one who looked like a rowing

Great Gate, not caring

human

targets

it

Part of the

hit:

one

blue, the short

long, thin

Trinity and threw a

people emerging after luncheon through the in the least

whom

I

knew

as

Guy

bond between the two was

sexual. Blunt felt a passionate

physical attraction for the younger man. Burgess, all his liaisons,

Bowra and

casual in

to the proletarian pleasures of

"rough trade." But,

others in the homintern, Blunt was also enormously

attracted by Burgess's intellectual

breadth of vision. At their

by Burgess's

much more

probably released Blunt's remaining sexual inhibitions

and introduced him like

Burgess, or the

one who was Anthony Blunt. 119

first

flair,

conversational brilliance, and

meeting Goronwy Rees was enthralled

ability to relate his interests in the arts to the

interpretation of history

and that

Marxist

busmen's strike he was

in turn to a

helping to organize in Cambridge. 120 In 1972, seven years before his treachery was exposed, Blunt protested publicly against those

sought to

belittle the

remarkable

gifts

displayed in Burgess's Cambridge

years:

It is, I

think, important to repeat that he

was not only one

of the most intellectually stimulating people

I

have ever

known but

also had great charm and tremendous vivacity; and those people who now write saying that they felt physically sick in his presence are not speaking the truth.

They

are

may have been country. He was a

throwing back to his early years things that true about

Guy

in his later years in this

terrific intellectual

interests

stimulus.

He had

a far wider range of

than either [John] Cornford or [James]

Klugmann

two most prominent student Party activists in Cambridge]. He was interested in everything and although he was perverse in many ways there was no subject which one could discuss with him without his expressing some interesting and [the

worthwhile view. 121

own who

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

210

Burgess's most important influence on Blunt was to persuade his

to

him of

duty to translate his theoretical Marxism into an active commitment

work

Comintern

for the

—and ultimately the KGB—

tional struggle against fascism.

The

in the interna-

core of Burgess's argument was

probably accurately summarized in one of his favorite passages from a

memoir by Claud Cockburn:

A moment comes when your actions have to bear some kind of relation to your words. That

is

what

is

called the

Moment

of Truth. 122

That moment came early fired

by Henri's vision of

of the

German

in the

academic year 1933-34, when Burgess,

solidarity with the anti-Nazi Fiinfergruppen

workers, set out to form a Cambridge group of

five.

Blunt himself made a veiled reference to this turning point in his career in

an

published in 1973:

article

Quite suddenly, in the autumn term of 1933, Marxism hit

Cambridge.

I

can date

ical leave for that

[1934],

I

it

quite precisely because

term, and

when

found that almost

literally

I

came back

had sabbatin

January

my

younger friends had

Party;

and Cambridge was

all

become Marxist and joined the

I

transformed overnight. 123

how the "transformation" affected Moment of Truth" had come and that

Blunt could not then reveal publicly him. Burgess insisted that "the

Blunt had fascism.

now to commit himself to the Comintern's secret war against

At

the end of the Michaelmas (autumn) term 1933, Burgess

visited Blunt in

Rome, where he was spending

part of his sabbatical

staying with Ellis Waterhouse, then librarian at the British School in

Rome. Waterhouse was not privy to all that passed between Burgess and Blunt. He noted, however, that until Burgess's arrival "We never talked politics at

all.

But that was

all

did." It

was probably

in

to discuss. He was Anthony followed what he

Guy wanted

exceedingly intelligent about politics and

Rome, the capital of Fascist

Italy, that

Burgess

recruited Blunt to his secret ring of five to pursue the Comintern's secret

war against

international fascism. 124

Apart from Blunt, the most important early recruit to Burgess's ring of five was probably the Trinity Hall undergraduate Donald Maclean,

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

whom eighteen

211

Moscow. Maclean's father, Sir Donald Maclean, was a Presbyterian lawyer and Liberal politician of English birth but Scottish ancestry. At the time of his sudden death in 1932 he was president of the Board of Education in Ramsay MacDonald's National Government. Sir Donald's concern with high moral standards led him to send his son to Gresham's School, at Holt in Norfolk, whose headmaster, J. E. Eccles, emphasized to each new boy the importance "of truth, and frankness, and honour; of purity with

years later he

was

to defect to

and word, and deed; of the value and importance of hard work and honest work." To encourage purity and limit adolescent in thought,

sexual experimentation in daytime, each boy's trouser pockets were

sewn up. One of Gresham's most famous pupils in the Eccles era, the poet W. H. Auden, claimed in 1934: "The best reason I have for opposing fascism is that at school I have lived in a fascist state."

Maclean reacted

less strongly.

dence that he hated (even or his public school.

He

if

There

no convincing

is

evi-

he did not greatly love) either his father

played for Gresham's

at

rugby,

won an

exhi-

bition (slightly less prestigious than a scholarship) to Trinity Hall,

Cambridge, and

school with no taint on his moral reputation.

left

Unlike Philby and Burgess, however, he had his with

Communism

at

("James") Klugmann, cal

school.

His

who went on

to

school

first

friend

serious contact

Norman John

become a member of the

committee of the Communist Party of Great

the Party historian, later claimed that he

politi-

Britain, as well as

became a Communist

at

annoy the school authorities. Maclean had his first experience of leading a double life while still at school, concealing from his father both his loss of Christian faith and his increasingly left-wing political opinions. If he was not already a Communist by the time he arrived at Trinity Hall in 1931, he became one during his first year. It was probably his friend Kluggers, a modernGresham's

to

languages scholar at the neighboring Trinity College,

duced him to Burgess.

And

it

who

first

intro-

was probably the predatory Burgess who

became the bisexual Maclean's first lover. Having liberated Maclean from his sexual inhibitions, Burgess moved on rapidly to other conquests. He later ridiculed the idea that Maclean's "large, flabby, white whale-like body" could have appealed to him. In reality Maclean's tall, dark, athletic good looks made him, like Burgess, attractive to both sexes. 125 Burgess also released some of Maclean's political inhibitions. It was probably in the autumn term, 1933, shortly before he traveled to

Rome

to see Blunt, that Burgess

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

212

him

recruited

Comintern's secret war

to his secret cell, to join the

against international fascism.

November 1933 Maclean gave an

main Cambridge student magazine, The Granta, which contained a curious allusion to his double life on both the sexual and political planes. Maclean began the interview by stating that he had three different personalities. He then adopted each of them in turn: first the camp, homosexual aesthete Cecil, "Just slipping into my velvet trousers when I heard you call. You must come to my next party. I am going to have real Passion flowers and everybody is going to dress up as a Poem In

.

.

interview to the

.

of Today"; then the heterosexual sporting hearty Jack, "Just having a steak at the Pig and Whistle

good fellows there finally,

—and damn

I

heard you shout. Some awfully

fine waitresses too (he

winks)"; and,

the innermost Maclean, the deadly serious Marxist grind Fred,

"Very busy just now trying is

when

to find out

material or merely dialectic.

to work. That's

what I'm here

Like some of the

German

.

.

.

whether Middleton Murray

The

for."

point

is this.

[sic]

Everybody ought

126

Fiinfergruppen on which

it

was modeled,

Burgess's Ring of Five had a fluctuating membership that did not five. Its earliest members probably also included Watson and James Klugmann. Neither, however, was later regarded by the KGB as in the same class as Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean or the Fifth Man recruited in 1935.

always total exactly Alister

—

In the spring of 1934 Burgess changed his research subject from the seventeenth-century "Bourgeois Revolution" to the "Indian

Mu-

127

That project too ran out of steam as Burgess became preoccupied with the secret war against fascism. In May, soon after Philby returned to London, he visited Cambridge and gave Burgess a firsthand

tiny."

account of his adventures with the Comintern underground in Vienna. 128 Goronwy Rees found Burgess's admiration for Philby "so I found it difficult to understand on what objective was based." 129 It was probably also in May, and in an East that Burgess had his first meeting with Arnold Deutsch,

excessive that

grounds

it

End cafe, whom, like

Philby, he

knew simply

as Otto.

Philby of his recruitment. Philby, by his gratulating him." 131 In the

130

own

Burgess wrote to

tell

account, "replied con-

summer of 1934, with the encouragement of Germany and Russia accompanied by the Oxford Communist Derek Blaikie (later killed in the Second World War). Their visit to Germany took place at a dramatic time. Shortly Deutsch, Burgess visited both

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

213

had discussed with a young German Communist how he might escape to Russia, they heard the sound of distant gunfire. It was June 30, 1934, the "Night of the Long Knives," when Hitler settled 132 accounts with his opponents in the Nazi Party. During his visit to Moscow, according to one of his confidants, Burgess met both Pyatnitsky, the head of OMS, and Bukharin, the former Comintern leader. 133 The trip encouraged him in his conviction that he was working for the Comintern in a secret war against international fascism. But on his return Deutsch was able to persuade him that to pursue the secret war he, like Philby, must go underground and after they

break

all visible ties

manner

his friends

with the Communist Party. Burgess did so in a

found bizarre, comparing Stalin unfavorably with

the fascist dictators, and pointing to fascism as "the

Even

at the secret

wave of the future."

meetings of the Apostles he hid his political convic-

tions:

In any discussion of ideas he was always ready with an apt quotation, an amusing anecdote, a suggestive analogy, a

mocking cal,

riposte. If the question before the society

he spoke

in

was

politi-

metaphors that were distant and obscure.

he was challenged to state his

own

He would

blue eyes would widen.

If

convictions, his bright

look at the challenger with

a beguiling smile, and then speak of other things. 134

As he coaxed Burgess an nal

into accepting at least

some of the

discipline of

NKVD agent, Deutsch also persuaded him to water down his origiaim of a Comintern

cell,

pen, working as a group.

by Deutsch and craft,

later

conceived in imitation of the Funfergrup-

The Cambridge

by Maly. 135 But,

recruits

were run individually

in defiance of

orthodox trade-

Burgess continued to look on intelligence as a semisocial activity

carried

on

in collaboration

edged, "It was Burgess

of us." 136

It

was that

with his friends.

who

As

Philby later acknowl-

on maintaining the links with all which in 1951 almost led to Philby's

insisted

insistence

downfall. 137

At Deutsch's prompting, Donald Maclean cut his links with the Communist Party at the same time as Burgess. After graduating with first-class honors in modern languages in June 1934, he had intended either to go to teach English in the Soviet Union or to stay on in Cambridge to work for his Ph.D.; the subject he had in mind for his dissertation

was a Marxist

analysis of

John Calvin and the

rise

of the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

214

bourgeoisie. Instead he

summer

announced

to his

mother

in the course of the

that he intended to try for the Foreign Office.

Lady Maclean

was pleased but asked whether Donald's intentions might not with his Communist

"You must

beliefs.

cock," replied her son, "but the fact lately."

He

think

I

turn like a weather-

I've rather

is

gone

for the Foreign Office

passed with flying colors. Maclean later described interview he was asked about his

I'm afraid

did an instant double-take: Shall

I

truth, or shall

"Yes,"

I said,

shaken them

I

brazen

it

out?

I

I

at

—and

I

1935. 138

He

at his final

Cambridge:

deny the

decided to brazen

"I did have such views off." I

the British

how

"Communist views"

that

off" all

crammer near exams in August

spent most of the next year at a

Museum, preparing

conflict

it

out.

haven't entirely

think they must have liked

my

honesty

because they nodded, looked at each other and smiled. Then the chairman said:

"Thank you,

that will be

all,

Mr. Ma-

clean." 139

When Maclean mounted the steps of the Foreign Office in October

1935

as a

new member

first

of the Magnificent Five to penetrate the corridors of power. It

secrets.

of His Majesty's Diplomatic Service, he became the

took Burgess longer than Maclean to gain access to

By

official

the end of 1934 his research had ground to a halt and he

decided to leave Trinity. His

job outside Cambridge, early in 1935, mother of his Trinity friend and fellow Apostle, Victor (later Lord) Rothschild. But his long-term aim, agreed on with Deutsch at their regular meetings in East End cafes, was to penetrate the corridors of power if possible the Secret Intelligence 140 Service. To that end, Burgess set out to exploit "cynically and consciously ... the old boy network," deploying in the process all his considerable charm save that, as he later admitted, he "could never

was

first

as financial adviser to the

—

bother to keep his finger-nails clean." 141

He

appears to have

made an

unsuccessful attempt to get a job in the Conservative Party Research

Department, directed by

Sir

Joseph

Ball,

former head of MI5's Investi-

gation Branch and a close adviser to the future prime minister Neville

Chamberlain. 142

By

the end of 1935, however, Burgess had

become personal young homosexual Conservative M.P. Captain "Jack" Macnamara, whom Rees considered "so far to the right that it was reasonable to call him a fascist." "Guy talked about his employer with assistant to the

.

.

.

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

215

a kind of genial contempt; he was once again playing his Figaro role

who

and his employer went on a number of fact-finding missions to Nazi Germany, which, according to Burgess, consisted largely of homosexual escapades with sympa143 Burgess built up a remarkable thetic members of the Hitler Youth. range of contacts among the continental homintern. Chief among them was Edouard Pfeiffer, chefde cabinet to Edouard Daladier, French war minister from January 1936 to May 1940 and prime minister from of the servant

April 1938 to

is

March

really the master." Figaro

1940. Burgess told friends lurid stories of how

"He

had spent an and two members of the French cabinet evening together at a male brothel in Paris. Singing and laughing, they had danced around a table, lashing a naked boy, who was strapped to and

Pfeiffer

.

.

.

with leather whips." 144

it,

Unlike Philby, Burgess, and Maclean, Blunt did not need to

adopt a new and bogus right-wing a

Having never been he had no background as an activist to political identity.

Communist Party militant, The Marxist-informed contextualism

conceal.

criticism in the 1930s politics

that underpinned his art seemed remote both from the world of active

and from the polemics of Stalinist theoreticians. Indeed, Blunt

has been accused, probably unfairly, by one leading Marxist critic of de-politicizing art history

and trying to render

it

"formalist and value-

free." Blunt's basic premise, enunciated in the thirties,

art

was

to insist that

cannot be divorced from society:

Works

artists; artists are men; men and are in a large measure formed by the which they live. Therefore works of art cannot be

of art are produced by

live in society,

society in

considered historically except in

human and

ultimately in

social terms.

After a trip to Russia in the

summer

of 1935 his Marxist sympathies

became more

explicit in his articles as art critic of

intellectual,"

he declared,

The Spectator. "The no longer afraid to own to an interest in the practical matters of the world, and Communism is allowed to be a subject as interesting as Cubism." He went on to call for artists' unions and the transformation of museums from pleasure palaces into classrooms. 145 It was probably after his visit to Russia that Blunt began regular meetings with Arnold Deutsch. Though a radical voice in the art world, he was persuaded by Deutsch to affect indifference to Party politics. Michael Straight, a young American economist at Trinity who "is

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

216

joined the Apostles in discussions that he

mistake agent.

March

was

until early in

1936, concluded from Blunt's part in the

"totally unpolitical."

1937

when Blunt

He

did not realize his

tried to recruit

him

as a Soviet

146

The most important agent

talent-spotted by Blunt

was the Fifth Man,

the Trinity undergraduate John Cairncross. Together with Philby, Burgess, Blunt,

and Maclean, he

is

remembered by the Center

Magnificent Five, the ablest group of foreign agents in

as

one of the

KGB

history.

But for the conspiracy theories surrounding the career of Sir Roger Hollis, and the other false trails that confused the media mole hunt in the 1980s, Cairncross might well have been

unmasked

as the Fifth

Man

even before Gordievsky provided the clinching evidence. Though Cairncross

is

the last of the Five to be publicly identified, he successfully

penetrated a greater variety of the corridors of power and intelligence

than any of the other four. In

less

than a decade after leaving

Cam-

bridge, he served successively in the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the

private office of a SIS.

Gordievsky

government minister, the recalls

sigint

agency

GC & CS, and

Dmitri Svetanko, while head of the British desk

Chief Directorate, speaking of Cairncross "with awe, admiand respect." "Cairncross's achievements," said Svetanko, "were the equal of any of the Five except Philby." 147 His student academic in the First

ration

record was also as remarkable as that of any other

member

of the Five.

Cairncross was born in 1913 into a modest but intellectually gifted

Glasgow

family. His elder brother, Alec

KGB), was

(who had no connection

who became, succeshead of the Government Economic Service, Master of St. Peter's College, Oxford, and Chancellor of Glasgow University. Like Alec, John Cairncross won a scholarship to Hamilton Academy, near Glas-

with the

a distinguished economist

sively,

gow. In 1930,

at the age of seventeen,

the political traditions of

probably already influenced by

Red Clydeside and

the social injustices of the

depression, he entered

Glasgow University, where for two years he studied French, German, political economy and English. 148 He then moved to the Continent to improve his languages, spending the academic year 1933-34 in Paris at the Sorbonne. While there he gained the licence es lettres in only a year,

won

a scholarship to Trinity College,

Cambridge, and probably made contact with Munzenberg's World

Committee

for the Relief of the Victims of

German

Fascism.

By the time Cairncross arrived at Trinity to read French and German in October 1934, he was an open Communist. His licence from

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

the Sorbonne allowed

him

to skip the

217

part of the modern-languages

first

149 degree course and graduate with a Cambridge B.A. in only two years. One of Cairncross's college supervisors in French literature was Anthony Blunt, who gave him a series of individual weekly tutorials (or "supervisions" as they are called at Cambridge). Blunt's patrician manner and Marxist intellectualism, apparently aloof from the harsh realities of the class struggle, jarred on the passionate young Scottish Communist. "I didn't like him," said Cairncross later, "and he didn't

like

me."

him for Burgess, who met CairnCambridge and established an immediate rapport with him. Forty years later, in an interview in which he concealed most of his KGB career, Cairncross acknowledged that he had found Burgess "fascinating, charming and utterly ruthless." 150 During one of Burgess's visits to Cambridge in 1935, he recruited Cairncross as a Comintern agent in the secret war against international fascism and put him in touch with Arnold Deutsch. 151 By 1936 Cairncross had broken all overt contact with the Communist Party and Blunt, however, talent-spotted

cross during one of his visits to

applied to join the Foreign Office. In the

from Cambridge with

first-class

summer

honors

elected by Trinity to a senior scholarship,

in

of 1936 he graduated

modern languages, was

and passed

at the top of the

Foreign Office entrance examinations, a hundred marks ahead of a

Con O'Neill (later a leading British diploautumn he became, after John King and Donald Maclean,

brilliant fellow of All Souls,

mat). In the

the third Soviet agent working in the Foreign Office. 152

The growing

potential of the

intelligence supplied to Pieck

Cambridge

Five, the importance of the

by Captain King from the Foreign

Office,

and the simultaneous development by Deutsch of an espionage ring

in

Woolwich Arsenal, determined INO at the beginning of 1936 to send Maly to London to take overall charge of NKVD illegal operations. The NKVD "legal" resident at the London embassy, Aron Vaclavovich Shuster, took no part in any of these operations beyond providing a channel of communication to Moscow Center and other the

forms of

illegal

support. 153

INO, admired Maly's great gifts in recruitand winning the loyalty of his agents, but remained

Slutsky, the head of ing, inspiring,

concerned by his tendency to remorse about his past career. After bibulous evenings in restaurants with his agents,

Maly was liable to Hede Massing

reminisce about some of the horrors he had witnessed.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

218

later

wrote of him:

"A discreet man

of the world

when

sober, he lapsed

and fits of self-accusation when drunk. To learn of the nightmares under this polished exterior was frightening." Maly had a passionate love affair with one of Ignace Reiss's agents, named Gerda Frankfurter. "But Moscow," according to Hede Massing, "well into terrible depression

aware of Russian

his alcoholic inclinations, forced

girl

whom

him

into marriage with a

he disliked. She was to act as a combination

[of]

nurse and police guard." 154

Maly and

his wife arrived in

Austrian passports in the

name

London

early in 1936, using false

of Paul and Lydia Hardt.

He

intro-

duced himself to Captain King as "Mr. Petersen," an executive of an imaginary Dutch bank, which King's NKVD controller, Pieck, had

him was purchasing inside information from the Foreign Office. Initially King delivered copies of Foreign Office documents on his way home from work to Pieck's office in Buckingham Gate. From Buckingham Gate copies or originals of the documents were taken to Maly by a British Communist electrical engineer, Brian Goold-Verschoyle {alias Friend), who for some years had acted as a Comintern courier. Goold-Verschoyle, who had rebelled against a public-school education and been inspired by a romantic vision of the Soviet workerpeasant state, believed he was delivering political directives from the Communist International. He was shocked when one of King's packets came open and he discovered Foreign Office documents inside. Maly told

telegraphed the most important of King's material to Soviet embassy in Kensington, using the code

Moscow from the

name Mann. The remain-

der were taken by Goold-Verschoyle or another courier to be photo-

graphed

at a studio

run by Wolf Levit, a

German

NKVD

photogra-

pher. 155 Initially, Donald Maclean, who began his Foreign Office career League of Nations and Western Department (which dealt with Dutch, Iberian, Swiss, and League affairs), had access to a more limited

in the

range of Foreign Office material than the humbler but also more strategically placed King.

The most

useful intelligence he provided to the

NKVD probably concerned the Spanish Civil War, wrote

later:

"We

were

all

of which Maclean

united in wishing the French and Soviet

governments would intervene to save the Spanish government from Franco and the fascists." He probably conveyed to the the

NKVD

exaggerated view that British nonintervention was part of a broader

Germany designed to leave Stalin to face Maly saw Maclean chiefly as a long-term invest-

policy of appeasement toward

fascism alone. 156 But

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

219

ment and urged him to concentrate during his early career in the Foreign Office less on obtaining intelligence than on advancing his own 157 In this Maclean was triumphantly succareer as rapidly as possible. cessful. The personnel department provided the warmest of testimonials when it recommended him in March 1938 to the British ambassador in

France for

his first foreign posting as third secretary in the Paris

embassy:

Maclean,

who

is

the son of the late Sir

Donald Maclean,

whom

you may remember as a Liberal Member of Parliament, has done extremely well during his first two years here and is one of the mainstays of the Western Department. He is a very nice individual indeed and has plenty of brains and keenness. He is, too, nice-looking and ought, we think, to be a success in Paris from the social as well as the

of view.

work point

158

By now Maclean's reputation had grown

so rapidly that he

was being

tipped as a future permanent under-secretary. 159

John Cairncross, who entered the Foreign Office a year

after

autumn of 1936, did not fit in nearly as easily. Over the next two years he worked in the American, League of Nations, Western, Maclean,

in the

and Central departments without finding a real niche for himself. For a time he worked with Maclean in the Western Department, gaining access to what he himself described as a "wealth of valuable information on the progress of the lean's easy

charm and

Civil

War

in Spain."

social graces;

160

though he

range of contacts within Whitehall, he did not

John

Cairncross lacked Mactried to cultivate a

make many

Colville, assistant private secretary to Neville

Chamberlain and

subsequently private secretary to Churchill, found him "a very gent,

though sometimes incoherent, bore."

wide

friends. Sir

intelli-

He later recalled that "Cairn-

was always asking people out to lunch ... He ate very slowly, slower than anyone I've ever known." Cairncross did, however, make detailed notes of his lunchtime conversations in Whitehall, which he passed on to the NKVD. 161 After his first year in the Foreign Office, Maly

cross

suggested to

ment

him

that he think of transferring to the Treasury, a depart-

that, unlike the

Foreign Office, the

He finally did so in October to see

him

go, having

1938.

NKVD had yet to penetrate.

162

The Foreign Office was probably glad

concluded that his awkward manner made him

unsuitable for a diplomatic career.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

220

Burgess was doubtless frustrated by the ability of his recruit Cairncross to penetrate Whitehall more rapidly than he could. Late in

1936 he was taken on by the

BBC as a producer. After a training course

and producing, improbably, a series called Keep Fit with Miss Quigley, he moved to the Talks Department of the Home Service (now Radio 4)

and began

to seek out

men

with past or present intelligence connec-

whom he made the tempting offer of giving a talk on

tions to

the radio.

His most important new contact was David Footman, deputy head (later

head) of the Political Intelligence Department in SIS. 163 Footman

would doubtless have been horrified to learn that the producer of his talk on Albania in the summer of 1937 was an NKVD agent. But no such suspicion crossed his mind, and a year later, much impressed by Burgess's obvious flair for international relations, he helped him to get a job in SIS.

Burgess continued for some years to return regularly to bridge to attend meetings of the Apostles and left

Trinity for the

Warburg

Institute in

visit friends.

London

in 1937,

Cam-

Until Blunt

he consulted

with Burgess on suitable recruits for Soviet intelligence. Michael Straight concluded after his in

own attempted

1937 that Burgess was "the invisible

recruitment by Blunt early

man

behind Anthony." 164

was Leonard Henry ("Leo") Long, who Communist, in October 1935 with a brilliant academic reputation and a scholarship in modern languages. "I was a working-class boy," said Long later, "and had a deep sense of the inequity of society." 165 Blunt supervised his work in French and was Blunt's most important recruit arrived at Trinity, already a

probably chiefly responsible for his election to the Apostles in 1937.

At about the same

NKVD.

time, Blunt also recruited

him

to

work

May

for the

Like Straight, Long found Blunt's recruiting technique so

persuasive partly because he appeared compassionate rather than over-

Long later recalled, "never tried blackmailing or we shared a deep belief in the Communist During the Second World War Long was to be run personally

bearing. "Blunt,"

bullying me, because cause." 166

by Blunt as a Soviet subagent.

Though Kim Philby

ultimately

became the most important of the

Magnificent Five, his career took off more slowly than those of the other four. His unexciting work for the Review of Reviews after his return

from Vienna

left

him

intermittently despondent at

how

little

he was

achieving in the secret war against fascism and in need of encourage-

ment from Deutsch. His

first

minor success was

to gain acceptance

by

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

221

pro-German Anglo-German Fellowship, whose "constant contact" with Goebbels and the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment was denounced in a secret Foreign Office memorandum. Philby's enthusiastic part-time work for the fellowship opened up the prospect of a full-time job starting a new trade journal financed by German money. Though in the end the job failed to materialize, Philby had a number of meetings with the German ambassador in London, von Ribbentrop, and paid several visits to Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry the

in Berlin.

167

Philby was in Berlin in July 1936 the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

when he heard the news of that war which gave him

was

major intelligence assignment, operating under journalistic

his first

cover.

It

"My

immediate assignment," he wrote

get first-hand information

usual his memoirs

however, makes

fail

it

on

all

to tell the

in his

memoirs, "was to

aspects of the fascist

whole

war

effort."

As

truth. Gordievsky's information,

possible to solve the chief remaining mystery about

1940 the

Philby's time in Spain. Early in

NKVD

defector Walter

Krivitsky visited England, where he was debriefed by Jane Archer,

whom

Philby described as the second-ablest

countered.

From

"elicited a tantalizing scrap of information

officer

he ever en-

about a young English

had sent to Spain during the Civil The "young English journalist" was Philby. The "tantalizing

journalist

War." 168

whom

MI5

Krivitsky, writes Philby in his memoirs, Mrs. Archer

Soviet intelligence

scrap of information" was about a plan to assassinate General Franco.

Early in 1937 Yezhov sent orders to Maly to use one of his British agents to travel to Spain

under journalistic cover, penetrate

General Franco's entourage, and help organize his assassination. 169

London news agency to give him a letter of accreditawar correspondent, and arrived in Spain in February 1937. Once there he bombarded The Times with unsolicited reports of the war written from areas controlled by Franco's forces. 170 His career as a Soviet agent in Spain was very nearly cut short before it began in Philby persuaded a tion as a free-lance

earnest. ally

By

Philby's

own

reckoning, he escaped detection "almost

by the skin of my teeth."

Two months

after

liter-

he arrived in Spain he

was wakened in the middle of the night by two Nationalist Civil Guards hammering on his bedroom door. As he dressed under the watchful eye of the guards he realized he had

left his

NKVD code written on a piece

of ricepaper in the ticket pocket of his trousers. Unable to dispose of it on the

an

way to the Civil Guards headquarters, he found himself ushered into office

lit

by a single bright naked lightbulb to be interrogated by "an

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

222

undersized major of the Civil Guard, elderly, bald and sour." Then he

was told to turn out his pockets. The next few seconds were among the most critical in Philby's life:

my wallet, I threw it down on [the] table, giving moment a flick of the wrist which sent it spinning towards the far end. As I had hoped, all three men made a

Taking it

first

at the last

dive at

it,

spreadeagling themselves across the table. Con-

fronted by three pairs of buttocks,

I

scooped the scrap of

paper out of my trousers, a crunch and a swallow, and

it

was

gone. 171

Thereafter Philby's fortunes rapidly improved. In officially

Spain.

by The Times as one of

He traveled

to

London

On

The Times and Maly.

its

May he was taken on

two correspondents

to settle the details of his

in Nationalist

work with both

his return to Spain Philby strengthened his

cover by acquiring as a mistress Lady Frances ("Bunny") Lindsay-

Hogg, the divorced wife of an English baronet and an ardent

royalist.

Bunny later recalled: "He communism or anything like

Philby dissembled brilliantly even in bed.

never breathed a word about socialism,

At the end of the year Philby became a local hero. Three journala car in which he had been traveling were fatally injured by an artillery shell. Philby himself was slightly wounded. He reported modestly to the readers of The Times: "Your correspondent was taken to a first aid station where light head injuries were speedily treated. Meanwhile Spanish officers worked gallantly in an attempt to that."

ists sitting in

.

rescue the occupants of the car regardless of falling shells."

.

.

On March 2

General Franco himself pinned onto Philby's breast the Red Cross

Communist M.P., Willie Gallacher, House of Commons. Philby later claimed, probably

of Military Merit. Britain's only protested in the accurately:

My

wounding

and

intelligence

in

Spain helped

work

my work—both

journalism

—no end. Before then there had been

a lot of criticism of British journalists from Franco officers

who seemed

to think that the British in general

must be a

of communists because so

lot

many were fighting with the International Brigade. After I had been wounded and decorated by Franco himself, I became known as "the English-decorated-by-Franco" and

all

sorts of doors

opened for me.

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

In the opinion of one British diplomat "There was

know about the extent of the German and

not

little

223

that Philby did

Italian military participa-

on the Franco side." Philby passed on the intelligence he gathered from within the Franco camp at meetings with NKVD officers across 172 But the mission the French border at Hendaye or St. Jean de Luz.

tion

which Maly had sent Philby to Spain, to help organize the assassinawas abandoned in the summer of 1937 before Philby had

for

tion of Franco,

173 the confidence of Franco's entourage.

won

In July 1937 fell

Maly was

recalled to

Moscow. Most

INO

officers

under suspicion during the paranoia of the purges; only a minority

survived the Great Terror. Maly's religious background and revulsion

made him an obvious suspect. The high praise he had received from Yezhov and the commendation from Stalin in the previous year left him with a faint hope that he might somehow be able to counter whatever charges were laid against him. But his main motive for returning was a curious sense of fatalism. He told Elizabeth Poat the use of terror

retsky, the wife of Ignace Reiss: kill

me

"They

here. Better to die there."

174

similar order to return, records that

a former priest

I

will kill

me

there and they will

Aleksandr Orlov,

Maly

haven't got a chance. But

who refused a know that as

told him: "I I

have decided to go there

so that nobody can say: 'That priest might have been a real spy after " 175 all.' The citation beneath Maly's portrait in the First Chief Directorate

Memory Room

records that he was shot late in 1937. 176

Maly's liquidation for over a year.

left

Kim

Philby without a regular controller

At the time of Maly's

recall final details of the plan,

involving Philby, to assassinate General Franco, had yet to be approved

by Moscow Center. Thereafter

was

at least partly

who knew some

it was shelved. The assassination plan compromised by the defection of Walter Krivitsky,

of the details of

it

including the involvement of "a

young English journalist." There had also been a change of NKVD priorities. For the remainder of the Civil War, the destruction of Trotskyists in Spain was a higher priority than the liquidation of Franco. 177

in

But for his recall to Moscow, Maly might have been arrested London. Though MI5 had no knowledge of either NKVD penetra-

tion of the Foreign Office or the recruitment of the

of

its

agents,

Olga Grey, succeeded

in

Cambridge

Five, one

winning the confidence of the

head of a Soviet spy ring inside Woolwich Arsenal, Percy Glading, a veteran Comintern agent run successively by Deutsch and Maly. In February 1937 Miss Grey was asked by Glading to rent an apartment

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

224

in

visited

by Maly,

described to Olga in the

to

Two months later the apartwhom Glading introduced as Mr. Peters and

Kensington to be used as a safe house.

ment was

Grey

as "an Austrian

Russian cavalry."

Moscow, Glading

On August

who had served during the war

16, a

few weeks after Maly's

arrived at the apartment with Deutsch,

recall

whom

he

introduced as Mr. Stephens. Miss Grey agreed to help Mr. Stephens

photograph documents brought to the apartment by Glading. She was

no

linguist

and never discovered the Stephenses' nationality, let alone Arnold and Josefine Deutsch spoke

their true identity; in her presence to each other in French.

Late in October Miss Grey noted the reference number of a

MI 5

to

it as the plan of a new fourteen-inch naval gun. Early November Glading announced that the Stephenses were returning

to

document photographed by

Josefine Deutsch,

which enabled

identify

Moscow

because of the

expected to remain in to

London

illness

in

of their daughter; Mrs. Stephens was

Moscow and

her husband was unlikely to return

until after Christmas. In the

meantime Miss Grey was asked

to practice using the photographic apparatus installed in the

by Mrs. Stephens so that she could take over from

her.

apartment

178

Unlike the recall of Maly, that of the Deutsch family seems to

have been prompted their cover

was

in

less

by the paranoia of the purges than by fear that

danger of being blown. In the summer of 1937 the

Comintern agent Edith Tudor-Hart, used by the NKVD chiefly as a compromising details about the Deutsches' intelligence operations. At about the same time Deutsch's application to found a private limited company, which would give him a permanent base in London, was turned down. With his residence permit about to expire, he was interviewed by the police and asked for

courier, lost a diary that contained

details of his plans to leave the country. 179

The

arrest of

Glading and the Woolwich Arsenal spy ring by

the Special Branch in January 1938 ended any prospect that Deutsch

might return to Britain. lier,

Had MI5 and

the Special Branch

they would probably have arrested either

They delayed

moved

Maly or Deutsch

ear-

—

or,

hope of unraveling the spy ring as fully as possible before arresting Glading. 180 MI5 was not to know that by the beginning of 1938 the NKVD's entire London residency and illegal apparat would have been recalled to Moscow. Unlike Maly and most (if not all) of the London residency, Arnold and Josefine Deutsch were not liquidated on their return to Moscow. Arnold worked for

just possibly, both.

in the

several years in the Center as a handwriting

and

forgeries expert.

The

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

citation beneath his portrait in the First Chief Directorate

Room to

225

Memory

reveals that he was parachuted into his native Austria in 1942

conduct intelligence operations behind enemy

lines,

but was quickly

caught and executed by the Nazis. 181

The departure of Deutsch and

London

at the

end of 1937

left

the entire

NKVD residency from

the Magnificent Five and the other Soviet

agents in Britain without either direction or support. the abandoned agents

NKVD officers on

managed

to

make

the Continent, there

Though some of

intermittent contact with

was serious disruption during Moscow Center and in its

1938 both in the flow of intelligence to

handling by the heavily purged INO. 182

The

significance of the

first

phase of Soviet penetration of

Maly and Deutsch, has main success was the recruitment of two cipher clerks Oldham and King and two young diplomats Maclean and Cairncross in the Foreign Office. Important though the contents of some of the documents they provided undoubtedly were, the documents were more important still in assisting the code breakers of the combined NKVD-Fourth Department sigint unit. The myth has Whitehall, brought to an end by the recall of

been generally misunderstood.

—

—

Its

—

developed that code-breaking coups are achieved simply by brilliant mathematicians, nowadays assisted by huge banks of computers. In reality,

most major breaks of high-grade code and cipher systems on

which evidence

is

available were achieved with the help of at least

partial information

code breakers

in the

on those systems provided by espionage. Soviet 1930s had vastly greater assistance from espionage

than their Western counterparts. All four

NKVD agents in the Foreign

which in some compared with the ciphered versions as an aid in

Office provided plain-text British diplomatic telegrams,

instances could be

breaking the ciphers. All four were also in a position to supply

gence on the cipher systems themselves.

Gordievsky has

little

It is

safe to conclude,

intelli-

though

direct information, that the successes of Soviet

code breakers against the Japanese in the 1930s were paralleled by successes on a perhaps similar scale against the British. 183

NKVD and Fourth Department, however, some disruption at the climax of the Great Terror. Late in 1937 both Gleb Boky, the head of the combined NKVD-Fourth Department sigint unit, and his deputy, Colonel Kharkevich, were shot. After Boky's arrest, a secret cache of gold and silver coins was discovered in his suite. Boky's successor, Shapiro, lasted only a month before being arrested in his turn. At a lower level, however, the cryptanalysts Like the rest of the

Soviet sigint suffered

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

226

were

far less

purged than INO.

S.

Tolstoy, the head of the Japanese

perhaps the most productive in the unit, remained in

section,

office

throughout both the Terror and the Second World War. 184

Once Terror,

its

the

NKVD

recovered from the disruption of the Great

penetration agents in Britain and elsewhere were to achieve

greater successes than ever before.

During the Second World

War

Soviet agents in Britain succeeded in penetrating not merely Whitehall

but the British intelligence services themselves.

Though

the United States represented a

Britain for Soviet intelligence for

much

lower priority than

most of the 1930s,

As

it

was even more

most important achievement of Soviet espionage targeted on the United States before the outbreak of war was the enormous assistance it provided to Soviet sigint. Before and during the Second World War, the American emvulnerable to Soviet penetration.

bassy in

Moscow was

in Britain, the

probably even more comprehensively penetrated

than that of any other major power. Diplomatic relations with the Soviet

Union were established

United States had no intelligence

in

"We

Bullitt,

at a time

when

first

American am-

wrote to the State Department

should never send a spy to the Soviet Union. There

weapon at once so disarming and effective in nists as sheer honesty." 185

the

agency and American military

was both small and disorganized. The

bassador in Moscow, William C. in 1936:

November 1933

civilian intelligence

relations with the

is

no

Commu-

That honesty was taken to remarkable George Kennan, one of the original members of Bullitt's staff, later recalled that during its first winter of 1933-34 the embassy had no codes, no safes, no couriers, and virtually no security: "Communications with our government went through the regular telegraphic office and lay on the table for the Soviet government to see." When a security system was installed, it was ineffective. At Bullitt's request, his embassy became the first to be guarded by marines. They were quickly provided with mistresses by the NKVD. Charles (Chip) Bohlen, like Kennan both a founder member of the embassy and a future ambassador in Moscow, was sitting one day in the lobby of the Savoy Hotel, where the marines were then lodged, when a heavily made-up Russian woman walked up to the reception desk and said she wished to go up to Marine Sergeant O'Dean's room. "I," she announced, "am his Russian teacher." 186 With the assistance of similar "Russian teachers," the NKVD recruited at least one of the first group of American cipher clerks sent to the Moscow embassy, Tyler G. Kent, lengths.

Sigint,

who

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

227

probably supplied cipher materials as well as classified docu-

ments. 187

The ambassador's embassy

itself.

Bohlen

residence, Spaso House,

later recalled

how

its

was

as porous as the

telephones "tinkled half-

heartedly and indiscriminately, day and night; and when one answered them there was often no reaction at the other end, only labored breathing and a baffling verbal silence." Sergei, the caretaker, claimed ingeniously that the heavy breathing was that of the former people's commissar for foreign affairs, Chicherin, by now half crazed and living alone in a nearby apartment. Though his manner was genial and obliging, Sergei helped to organize the bugging of the embassy from his apartment, which he kept permanently locked. Not till Bohlen returned as ambassador in 1952 did the embassy demand a key to Sergei's locked apartment. By the time a key was grudgingly produced, after a delay of several weeks,

all

Sergei's apparatus had, predictably,

Sergei himself retired shortly afterward.

been removed.

188

Most American diplomats in the 1930s had little grasp of the and even less of Soviet sigint. Joseph E. Davies, who succeeded Bullitt as ambassador from 1936 to 1938, had less grasp than most. In Bohlen's view, "He had gone to the Soviet Union sublimely ignorant of even the most elementary realities of the

effectiveness of Soviet penetration

Soviet system and of

ideology. ...

its

He

never even faintly understood

the purges, going far toward accepting the official Soviet version of the existence of a conspiracy against the state."

Colonel (later Brigadier General) Phillip R. Faymonville, military attache

from 1934

to 1939,

though one of the embassy's few fluent

Russian speakers, was even more naive than Davies. Bohlen believed he had "a definite pro-Russian bias"; 189 Major Ivan D. Yeaton, military attache from 1939 to 1941,

of the

NKVD." When

came

Yeaton

to regard

left

for

Washington, gave him two

Faymonville as "a captive

Moscow

in 1939,

Faymonville,

French army manuals and asked him to give them to a friend in the Red Army. Faymonville also urged Yeaton to reemploy his Russian chauffeur, who, he said, would prove his "most valuable contact in Moscow." In the event Yeaton sacked the chauffeur and saw him a fortnight later dressed in

by then

in

the uniform of an

NKVD

On his arrival

in

captain.

Moscow,

classified

190

initially as assistant military attache,

Yeaton was appalled by the state of embassy security. The embassy codes, he concluded, were compromised, and the consulate clerks gave frequent parties with girls "generously provided" by the

NKVD.

Yea-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

228

ton also noted a

were pursued, doubtless with

officials

lerinas

number of homosexual

from the Moscow

ballet.

liaisons.

NKVD

191

Senior embassy

encouragement, by bal-

According to Bohlen: "There were

They around talking and

usually two or three ballerinas running around the Embassy.

would go there

and supper and would

for lunch

drinking until dawn.

.

.

.

Many temporary

sit

liaisons

were formed."

Attempts to seduce the ambassador, however, seem to have been unsuccessful.

One

of the ballerinas spent

much

professing "undying love" for Bullitt, as her "sun,

moon and

stars"

of her time at the embassy

whom

she eloquently described

—apparently without

effect.

192

Yeaton's criticisms of embassy security irritated rather than

impressed most of his colleagues.

When

he reported that the French

housekeeper of Laurence A. Steinhardt, ambassador from 1938 to 1942,

was selling embassy supplies on the Moscow black market, Yeaton was "admonished" by Steinhardt, who refused to believe him. Shortly before the introduction of new State Department codes early in 1940, Yeaton decided on his own initiative to ask, via military intelligence in Washington, for an FBI agent to inspect the embassy to ensure that the new codes were not compromised like their predecessors. 193 The FBI agent, posing as a courier, visited the embassy's code room at night and discovered the safes open and code books lying with messages on the table. At one point the code clerk on duty left the code room unattended with the door open for forty-five minutes. It was clear that the Russian employees of the embassy, who were almost as numerous as the Americans, had many opportunities for access to both ciphers and classified documents. The agent also reported to the FBI: "Not being able to find normal female companionship, the men attached to the embassy turn to a group of Soviet prostitutes for companionship. ... It is reported that

all

of these girls report constantly to the

GPU."

In addition, acts

of homosexual "perversion" had taken place in the embassy code

room. 194 Following the FBI report, "a small group of bachelors" was ordered back to Washington, and some improvements were made in

embassy

security. 195

But the FBI agent was not a technical expert. It did not occur to him to search the embassy for listening devices. When a search was finally ordered in 1944, a navy electrician discovered 120 hidden microphones on his

first

sweep of the building. Thereafter,

member of the embassy staff, "they kept turning up, in of any new tables or chairs which were delivered, in the plaster

according to a the legs

of the walls, any and everywhere." 196 Until the later 1930s intelligence gathering within the United

Sigint,

States

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

was a comparatively low

priority for

however, several influential

mid-thirties,

Moscow

Center.

underground

cells

229

By

the

of the

American Communist Party (CPUSA) were in varying degrees of contact with Comintern and Soviet intelligence officers. The main link between the Party underground and Soviet intelligence was Whittaker Chambers, a Communist journalist who was instructed in 1932 to break 197 In 1933 Chambers was sent to Moscow overt contact with the Party. His main controller on his return was Sandor training. for intelligence Goldberger, a former Comintern apparatchik bearing a striking resemblance to Groucho Marx.

As

well as

working for the Fourth DepartJ. Peters, a grey eminence

ment, Goldberger became, under the alias of the

CPUSA

for a quarter of a century.

198

Chambers began acting as courier between Goldberger cell in Washington founded by Harold Ware, a Communist official in the Department of Agriculture killed in a car In 1934

and an underground crash in 1935.

Its

other leading members, according to Chambers's later

testimony, included John (later

of the

J.

Abt of the Department of Agriculture

Works Progress Administration,

the staff of the Senate

Committee on Education and Labor, and the Justice Department); Nathan Witt of the Department of Agriculture (later of the National Labor Relations Board); Lee Pressman of the Department of Agriculture (later of the

Works Progress

Department of Agriculture

Administration); Alger Hiss of the

(later of the Special

Senate Committee

and Donald Hiss of the State Department (later of the Labor Department); Henry H. Collins of the National Recovery Administration (later of the Department of Agriculture); Charles Kramer (Krevitsky) of the National Labor Relations Board (later of the Office of Price Administration and the Senate Subcommittee on War Mobilization); and Victor Perlo of the Office of Price Administration (later of the War Production Board and the Treasury Investigation of the Munitions Industry, the Justice Department,

the State Department); his brother

Department).

member of the Ware cell, was become the founder member of a "parallel apparatus." 199 Among other new agents who entered Chambers's net in 1935-36 were Harry Dexter White, a high flyer in the Treasury Department; George Silverman, a government statistician (later employed in the Pentagon), who probably recruited White; and Julian Wadleigh, an Oxford-educated economist who moved in 1936 from the Department of Agriculture to the Trade Agreements Division of the State DepartIn 1935 Alger Hiss, the ablest

moved by Chambers

to

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

230

much the same as Cambridge Five: the lure of the Comintern's secret war against fascism. Wadleigh wrote later: "When the Communist International represented the only world force effectively resisting Nazi Germany and the other aggressor powers, I had offered my services to the Soviet underground in Washington as one small contribution to help ment. The motivation of the Washington moles was that of the

stem the

fascist tide."

In the

200

autumn of 1936

a

new Fourth Department

resident,

Boris Bykov, arrived to take control of Chambers's network from Goldberger.

Chambers

later described

Bykov,

a middle-aged man, about five feet seven,

who wore

hair,

expensive worsted

suits,

whom tall

he knew as Peter, as

with thinning, reddish

always with a hat, invariably

hand inside his jacket ("Napoleon style"), had an 201 Bykov "authoritative" manner and a "ferret-like way about him." suggested that the members of the underground be offered money to "put them in a productive frame of mind." When Chambers objected, Bykov gave him a thousand dollars then a considerable sum to buy Bokhara rugs for his four most valuable agents: Hiss, White, Silverman, and Wadleigh. Each was told that the rugs were "gifts from the Russian people to their American comrades." 202 In Britain by this time Soviet intelligence had so far succeeded carried his right

—

in penetrating only

—

one of the Whitehall ministries. In Washington, by

contrast, Soviet agents

were already

installed in a steadily

widening

area of the Roosevelt administration. But the penetration of Washing-

much lower priority than the penetration of Whitehall. Moscow was still far more interested in the major European powers and Japan than in the United States. Bykov was not much concerned with ton was a

the details of American policy making. Like Goldberger, his main aim

was

to collect intelligence

on Germany and Japan,

thing that bears on the preparations the

making

in particular "every-

Germans and Japanese

are

war against us." Bykov berated Wadleigh for failing to provide State Department documents on German and Japanese policy.

for

203

He was more satisfied with Hiss, who in the autumn of 1936 became assistant to Francis B. Sayre, assistant secretary of State. Hiss had access to a wide variety of telegrams from both diplomats and military attaches. to

Chambers

By

early 1937 he

at intervals of

was delivering packets of documents

about a week or ten days. Perhaps the most

valuable from Bykov's point of view were those that dealt with Japanese

.

Sigint,

Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five

policy during the Sino- Japanese

War.

A cable of March 2,

231

1937, cited

that they will be able unnamed "Japanese army chiefs wage a successful war against Russia while holding the Chinese in check on their flank with little difficulty." 204 Within the State Department Hiss covered his tracks as successfully as Maclean in the Foreign

the view of

.

.

.

to

Even Wadleigh had no idea that Hiss was working for the him as a very moderate New Dealer with

Office.

Russians: "I regarded

205 strongly conservative instincts." Say re later concluded that the docu-

ments provided by Hiss would "presumably" have enabled the Russians to break U.S. diplomatic ciphers.

206

It

did not occur to

him

that,

thanks to the penetration of the American embassy in Moscow, they

were broken already.

The comparatively low lection in the

priority given to Soviet intelligence col-

United States was reflected

in

both the personnel and the

methods employed. Goldberger and Bykov did not begin to compare with Deutsch and Maly. During his intelligence training in

Moscow

in

1933 Chambers, no doubt against instructions, sent postcards to his friends at

Back

home

—one

to

bestow "a Soviet blessing" on a newborn baby.

United States he engaged

in the

in

some

intelligence mystification,

adopting for example a slightly foreign accent, which persuaded leigh

and some of

his other agents that

Wad-

he was not American. 207 But

Goldberger and Bykov both allowed Chambers to get away with

mentary breaches of intelligence tradecraft. Some of

was involved

that he

in

his friends

ele-

knew

"highly secretive work"; on one occasion he

was "engaged in counterespionage for the Soviets Chambers treated his leading agent, Alger Hiss, as a family friend; he and his wife went to stay in the Hiss apartment. Others of Chambers's agents were to be found socializing at each revealed that he

against the Japanese."

other's

homes,

The

visiting art galleries,

and playing

table tennis together.

was Chambers himself. In Moscow. Increasingly disillusioned

greatest security risk, however,

July 1937 he

was summoned

to

with Stalinism and rightly fearful of the fate that awaited him, bers temporized for the next nine months. all

contact with the

in hiding,

208

NKVD.

he began to

Then

in April

Cham-

1938 he broke

After spending the rest of the year largely

tell his

story to sympathetic listeners.

209

In a

security-conscious state Chambers's extensive knowledge of Soviet penetration in

NKVD

Washington would have had catastrophic consequences for Washington was even feebler than

operations. But security in

232

in

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

London. Over the next few years Chambers was to discover that the the administration from the president downward had no seri-

FBI and

210 The state that at the end of the Second ous interest in his revelations.

World War was

to be targeted

by the

NKVD as "the Main Adversary"

was, until that point, the state most vulnerable to Soviet penetration.

Founders of the

tlin

KGB

with Dz'erzhinsky. tffcwV/ King 6

collection)

IliflMHfliii

iSiiSai-.iian

The

statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky in

Dzerzhinsky Square, Moscow, outside headquarters. (David King Collection)

KGB

Dzerzhinsky's statue topples before an enthusiastic

Poland,

y

m "

-

i i

i Mwnmm ©

crowd

November

in

Warsaw

in his native

1989. (Associated Press)

Opposite page: Above Stalin as a pallbearer (David King at Dzerzhinsky's funeral in 1926. Collection)

Below Mikhail Trilisser (fourth full figure from the left and inset), first head of KGB the foreign operations, takes the oath to

Cheka

flag.

Collection)

(National Archive; David King

OGPU

medal with Dzerzhinsky's head

wreath to commemorate the tenth anniversary (in 1927) of the founding of the Cheka. (David King Collection)

framed

in laurel

Oleg Gordievsky's identity card as colonel in the KGB, incorporating the shield from the original emblem of the Cheka.

KOMMTET rOCYMPCTBEHHOft BE30IIACH0CTH yflOCTOBEPEHHE HK N? 3406

COCTOHT B aamKHOCTH S/PZ.C

/caaaMMaaaBflMMfciQr y^ocTOBepexya paspeinrao xptMM* n nooicHMt orHtcrpcxbHOro opyvnra.

ji.

*£k£S)Stef

Jff u«^c^ci^e>e.f

I

Recruiters and Controllers of the Five

>->,

Teodor Maly, former Catholic priest and celebrated KGB illegal whose portrait hangs

and

today in the Memory Room of the KGB First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence).

to Maly's in the

IN Dr

Dr. Arnold Deutsch, protege of first

Teodor Maly

controller in England of the

Magnificent Five, whose portrait hangs next

FCD Memory Room.

DIESEM HAUSE LEBTE

ARNOLD DEUTSCH

WAHREND DER NATIONALSOZIAUSTISCHEN HERRSCHAFT WURDE ER IM ALTER VON 38 JAHREN IM NOVEMBER 1912 VON DEN SSFASCHISTEN ERMQRBET. ER KAMPFTE F been that of a go-between', according to official! at the UN, relaying

South African requeiti helping African

Reagan

1

lo

Waahinglt

eraU

to

widen

their miliur

babwe Ai South African t into aouthem Angola in Kirkpatnck played the

role of

|

Kryuchkov and the

FCD

Prezydent Wojciech Jaruzeiski przyjaj

Wladimira Kriuczkowa

26 bm. prezydent

Wojciech Jaruzeiski przyjql przebywajqcego z roboczq wlzytq w Polsce przewodniczqcego Komite'tu Bezpieczeiistwa Paristwowe-

go ZSRR Wladimira Kriuczkowa.

Wizyta u premiera Mazowieckiego Tego samego dnio prezes Rady Ministrow Tadeusz Mazowiecki przyjql Wladimira Kriuczkowa.

W

spotkaniu uczestniczy! gen. broni Czeslaw Kiszczak.

Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the the

first

FCD

foreign intelligence chief to

1974-88,

become

chairman of the KGB. (Associated Press)

The FCD's Finnish-designed headquarters

at

Yasenevo. The layout appears

in

Appendix C.

The Gorbachev Era 1985Abroad, as

at

Yasenevo, the working routine of

have changed

little

KR

work

KR

The

30 to

X

ratio of officers in

many

Most

era.

PR (Political

X

(Scientific

has the status of deputy

residencies

new

Before their arrival

30.

Gorbachev

(Counterintelligence and Security), or line

seems to

officers

one of three "lines":

in

and Technological). The head of each resident.

FCD

since the beginning of the

officers in foreign residencies

Intelligence),

617

is

roughly

PR

40

to

would have attended

officers

a series of alarmist briefings on the ever-present danger of "provocations" by Western intelligence services. In Gordievsky's experience,

they began by suspecting their neighbors, local shopkeepers, even the

London parks they

gardeners in the

crossed,

and imagined themselves

under constant surveillance. Most gradually got over

The working day officers

it.

PR

a.m.

in the residency begins at 8:30

line

begin the day by looking over the day's newspapers. In London,

they are expected to read

all

the main daily and

Sunday newspapers,

together with periodicals, of which the Economist and Private Eye are

probably read with greatest attention. At the start of each day residency officials collect their

most

larger than zipper.

working satchels (papka) from the

briefcases,

tional contacts ter.

officer

Though

all his

opera-

used to draft telegrams and reports to Mos-

usually kept on his key ring.

emblem and At the end of each

his

working

satchel, applies a piece of Plasticine his seal

on

18

it.

Soviet embassies send their reports to

KGB

munications are

OT

is

end of the zipper and presses

nary paper,

the officer's working

is

has an individual seal with a distinctive

is

working day he closes to the

their contents

which contains notes on

and the main items from correspondence with the Cen-

number, which

an

tetrad),

Another notebook

cow. Each

These are

have two compartments, and open with a

The most important of

notebook (rabochaya

safe.

residents use

first

35-mm

enciphered by a

Moscow on ordi-

film negative. Residents'

com-

KGB cipher clerk, then filmed by

(operational and technical support) operative. Incoming corre-

spondence from the Center arrives on developed a microfilm reader.

By

film,

which

read on

is

the beginning of the Gorbachev era there

an increasing tendency to print out paper copies of important

was

commu-

nications from the microfilm. Report telegrams to the Center began

with a standard formula, as in the following example.

Comrade

IVANOV

1-77-81090-91-111-126

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

618

This decodes as follows:

"IVANOV" to

is

which the telegram

the code

is

name

for the

department

in the

Center

addressed, in this case the First (North Ameri-

can) Department.

"I" indicates that the telegram

is

reporting intelligence, rather

than, say, active measures or operational details concerning agent

running.

Number

sequences beginning with 7

drafted: 77 indicates drafting

tell

how

the text was

by the residency, 78 by the source, 79 the

translation of an official text.

The number

8 prefaces the

month and year of the

report, in this

case October 1990.

The number in this instance),

9 indicates the type of source: 91

is

an agent

(as

92 a confidential contact, 93 a target for close study

(razrabotka), 94 an official contact.

The number

1 1

prefaces assessments of reliability:

1 1 1

is reli-

able (as in this case), 112 untested, 113 unreliable.

The number

12 refers to the occupation of the source; for

example, 121 indicates a source in government, 126 in the foreign ministry, 1213 in the press. 19

In Gordievsky's experiences, however,

was

far less precise. Residencies

would

much

KGB

reporting

rarely fabricate details about,

or intelligence from, individual agents. But in reports on particular topics they

would commonly

attribute to

unnamed

agents information

obtained from the media or even invent details they thought would please the Center.

Such practices were

of the Gorbachev era.

On March

still

common

25, 1985, the

at the beginning

London residency was

asked for urgent information on British reactions to Gorbachev's meetings with the Consultative

Unable

Committee of the

Socialist International.

to contact residency sources in the time available, the

simply invented a series of responses flattering to Gorbachev; as

its

PR it

line

gave

sources a range of fictional contacts. Next day the residency was

asked for another urgent report, this time on negotiations on Spanish

and Portuguese entry to the European Community. This time the PR line reports officer V. K. Zamorin simply went through the British press and concocted a report attributed once again to secret or confidential sources. Soon afterward the residency found an article that impressed it in the Economist Foreign Report, identifying areas in which the Soviet

Union had succeeded in acquiring advanced Western technology and it had failed. Knowing that the article would be rejected

others where

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

619

by the Center as disinformation, the residency did not send it to Moscow. Instead it sent a report based on the article to the Center, claiming that

it

derived from residency contacts.

had been

As most officers in the Center when stationed abroad,

guilty of similar abuses themselves

they rarely voiced their suspicions about the source of reports they received.

Making contact with cies see as their

some of the

20

fully recruited agents,

most important form of

which

residen-

all

intelligence collection,

is

an

enormously labor-intensive business because of the elaborate countervous with an agent residency at to

1

p.m.,

down by

KGB

For a rendezwould usually leave the drive by an elaborate route worked out beforehand

surveillance procedures laid at

4 p.m., a case

tradecraft.

officer

an inconspicuous parking place, preferably near a large block of

apartments.

He would

avoid parking either outside a private house

might attract attention or

where

his diplomatic license plate

ing lot

where the police might carry out checks. After parking his

car the case officer

would be picked up by another

officer,

in a park-

own

who would

drive around for an hour checking that they were not under surveil-

Meanwhile the KR (counterintelligence) line in the embassy would be trying to monitor radio communications from surveillance teams of the local security service to detect any sign that the case officer or the agent was being followed: an activity code-named "Impulse." lance.

The car

radios of the case officer and his colleague were tuned to the

wavelength of the embassy transmitter, which broadcast a coded warning consisting simply of the repetition in

Morse of one

alphabet (the letter chosen indicating the

KGB

warning was directed). At about

letter of the

officer to

whom

the

no surveillance had been colleague's car and make his way

3 P.M., if

would leave his on foot and by public transport to the 4 p.m. rendezvous with the

detected, the officer

agent. 21

Despite the

all

the changes in the

main operational

KGB

over the

priority of its foreign intelligence

last half

century,

arm has

scarcely

altered since the recruitment of the Magnificent Five. In the operational

work plan circulated to foreign residencies, Kryuchkov repeated the traditional formula: "The main effort must be concentrated on acquiring valuable agents." He went on to exhort residencies section of the 1984

to explore

new

possibilities of agent

recruitment "especially

among

young people with prospects for penetrating targets of interest to us." 22 There is no indication that Kryuchkov has changed his mind since becoming chairman of the KGB in 1988.

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

620

From

moment

came to power in March 1985, Mikhail for KGB foreign operations. First, main priorities Gorbachev saw two he was convinced that a dynamic foreign policy required a dynamic intelligence service. The unprecedented range of initiatives on which he embarked abroad made it vital to have the fullest possible political intelligence on Western responses to them. The increased demands on the PR line were already apparent before Gordievsky's escape from Russia in the summer of 1985 and have no doubt expanded since. The main priority of the FCD as it entered the 1990s was clearly exemplified by the choice of Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin to succeed Kryuchkov as its head in September 1988. 23 Like Aleksandr Semyonovich Panyushkin, head of the FCD from 1953 to 1956, Shebarshin began his career as a straight diplomat, serving in Pakistan from 1958 to 1962 and again from 1966 to 1968, where he began cooperating with the KGB residency. Following his second term in Pakistan, he transferred to the KGB and after training at the Andropov Institute began work at Yasenevo. In 1971 he was posted to India, where he headed the PR line before becoming main resident in New Delhi from 1975 to 1977. After the fall of the Shah in 1979 he became resident in Teheran, remaining there until his expulsion the

that he

When Gordievsky left the FCD in the summer of 1985,

in 1983.

Shebar-

shin had been working for about a year as deputy head of Directorate

RI, which prepares

FCD

reports for the top Soviet leadership. 24

For

Shebarshin to have leapfrogged several more senior candidates to succeed Kryuchkov in 1988

is

a certain indication that his reports in the

previous few years had greatly impressed the Politburo. to

And

for

them

have impressed the Politburo, they must have dealt with such major

issues as the West's response to the era. Just as

by

his briefings to

motion dence

to

"new thinking" of the Gorbachev

Gordievsky's appointment as London resident was helped

Gorbachev

head of the

FCD

in

December

1984, so Shebarshin's pro-

probably also reflects Gorbachev's confi-

in his intelligence assessments.

During the 1990s the

KGB

will

continue to exploit the tradi-

tional fascination of the Soviet leadership with highly classified reports.

As

in the past, the

material

it

KGB

doubtless continues to present

some of the

obtains from open sources as coming from secret agents.

Shebarshin defines the main function of the

FCD as "the task of ensur-

ing that the Soviet leadership has reliable and accurate information

about the real plans and designs of the leading Western countries with

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

621

regard to our country and about the most important international

problems." 25 The

FCD will continue for as long as possible to foster the

myth

truly understands the West. Its influence will only be

that only

it

increased by the Soviet Union's military, ideological, and economic

problems.

As

the

Warsaw Pact

gradually disintegrates, the Kremlin

is

withdrawing hundreds of thousands of troops from Eastern Europe.

And

as the ideological foundations of the Soviet state begin to crumble,

Moscow's

Communist faith is economy is simultaneously

prestige as the pilgrim center of the

crumbling, too.

The

crisis in the Soviet

compelling a decline in Soviet aid to developing countries. Intelligence thus takes on an enhanced importance as a

means of preserving the

Soviet Union's declining influence in the outside world.

Gorbachev's second main interest

in Soviet foreign intelligence opera-

and technological espionage (S&T). When he addressed the staff of the London embassy at a private meeting attended by Gordievsky on December 15, 1984, he singled out for praise the achievements of the FCD Directorate T and its Line X officers abroad. It was already clear that Gorbachev regarded covert acquisition of Western technology as an important part of economic tions lies in the field of scientific

perestroika.

For some years Directorate T had been one of the most successFCD. Its dynamic and ambitious head, Leonid Sergeevich

ful in the

Zaitsev,

dency

who had begun

in the 1960s,

leave the

FCD

specializing in

S&T

while at the

campaigned unsuccessfully

London

resi-

for his directorate to

and become an independent directorate within the

KGB. Kryuchkov,

however, was determined not to allow such a pres-

empire to escape from his control. Zaitsev

tigious part of his intelligence

claimed not merely that his directorate was self-supporting but that the

S&T it obtained covered KGB. Despite failing to win

value of the

the entire foreign operating costs

of the

its

independence, Directorate

functioned increasingly independently of the rest of the cers trained separately in the

departments and had their

Andropov

own

Institute

FCD.

T

Its offi-

from those of other all came from

curriculum. Almost

and engineering backgrounds. In foreign residencies Line X mixed relatively little with their colleagues in other lines. Direc-

scientific

officers

torate T, however, larger

was only part

machinery of

S&T

—though a

collection.

S&T intelligence gathering in the defense field ity

—was

—of

a

much

—the chief

prior-

crucial part

26

coordinated in the early 1980s by the Military Industrial

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

622

Commission (VPK), upgraded under Gorbachev to the State Commission for the Military-Industrial Complex, which oversees all weapons production. The VPK is chaired by a deputy prime minister and tasks five collection agencies: the

State

Committee

for

GRU, FCD

Directorate

T of the KGB,

the

Science and Technology (GKNT), a secret unit

in

Academy of Sciences, and the State Committee for External Economic Relations (GKES). Documents provided during the early 1980s by a French penetration agent in Directorate T, Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov, code-named Farewell, show that in 1980 the VPK gave instructions for 3,617 S&T "acquisition tasks," of which 1,085 were completed within the year, benefiting 3,396 Soviet research and development pro27 Ninety percent of the intelligence judged most useful by the jects. VPK in the early 1980s came from the GRU and the KGB. Though much S&T came from unclassified sources in the West such as scientific conferences and technical brochures, secret intelligence was judged to the

VPK's informacame from American sources (not all in the United States), 10.5 percent from West Germany, 8 percent from France, 7.5 percent from

be of crucial importance. In 1980, 61.5 percent of the tion

Britain,

and

3 percent

Though no

from Japan.

statistics are available for the

the evidence suggests that the scale of Soviet

Among

Gorbachev

S&T

era, all

has tended to

in-

VPK's major

successes

have been a Soviet clone of the U.S. airborne radar system,

AW ACS;

crease rather than to decrease.

the

American Bl-B; the RYAD series of computers plagiarized from IBM originals; and integrated circuits purloined from Texas Instruments. 28 The Soviet armed forces have come to rely on S&T successes like these. Currently about 150 Soviet weapons systems are believed to depend on technology stolen from the West. Less than half the work of Directorate T, however, follows the Russian Blackjack bomber, copied from the

VPK

requirements.

Of the

microcircuits) acquired by

5,456 "samples" (machinery, components, it

in 1980,

44 percent went to defense

dustries, 28 percent to civilian industry via the

KGB

cent to the

tional, year, just

came from

in-

and 28 per-

and other agencies. In the same, possibly excep-

over half the intelligence obtained by Directorate

T

allied intelligence services, the East

Germans and Czech-

S&T

continued to expand

oslovaks chief until 1989.

GKNT,

29

among them.

Even

at the

Soviet bloc

beginning of 1990 some East European for-

eign intelligence services were trying to impress their

new

political

masters by concentrating on the sort of Western technology required

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

to

623

modernize their outdated industries. The director of the CIA,

William Webster, claimed in February 1990 that the expanding

its

was still where recruit-

in the United States, knowledge or access to technical knowl-

work, "particularly

ing of people with technical

KGB

edge has increased." Directorate T's successes in Western Europe included

intelli-

gence from Italy on the Catrin Electronic Battlefield Communications

System being developed for introduction by

NATO in the early

1990s;

team of West German computer hackers to gain access to the Pentagon data bank and a variety of other military business and research computer systems. The main expansion of Line X work at the start of the 1990s, however, appeared to be taking place in Japan and South Korea. 30 The application of S&T to Soviet industry is an increasingly complex business. The imitation of the new generation of American and Japanese microcircuits involves tracking hundreds of thousands of connections and mastering a whole series of complex and the use of a

production procedures. The most plentiful

S&T

in intelligence history

has failed to prevent the growing gap between Soviet and Western field. That gap, in turn, makes the imitation of some of the most advanced Western inventions progressively more difficult.

technology, particularly outside the defense

As

well as providing large

logical intelligence, the

"new thinking" of the

amounts of political,

KGB

scientific,

and techno-

made a broader contribution to the Gorbachev era. The disintegration of the onealso

party Soviet system, as Ernest Gellner has persuasively argued, was due partly to a two-stage process of internal decay.

sustained by both the fear of

its

subjects

Under

and an

Stalin

officially

it

had been

prescribed

which few of them dared to question. Under Khrushchev fear Those who believed and those who conformed were relatively safe from the often random terror of the Stalinist era. For most Soviet citizens, repression gave way to stagnation. By the end of the Brezhnev era, after the brief false dawn of the Andropov succesfaith,

largely disappeared.

sion, faith in the

had once

much of the fear it What remained was what the Soviet historian Batkin

system had vanished, along with

inspired.

has termed serocracy, "the rule of the gray": a faceless, dreary, stagnant,

and corrupt bureaucracy. 31

The transformation of the decaying Soviet system and the adopmore enlightened foreign policy were also due, however, to a

tion of a

change

in its leadership's perception of the outside world, particularly

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

624

of the West.

No

Politburo

dictatorship and the

dawn

the West. Their ability to

vided by the

member between

the beginning of Stalin's

of the Gorbachev era ever really understood

make

sense of the political intelligence pro-

KGB was impaired by their own ideological blinders and

incurable addiction to conspiracy theory. In their dealings with the

West they compensated

for their lack of understanding with tactical

shrewdness, ruthlessness, relentless striving to gain the upper hand, and

knowledge of some of the West's weak points provided by their diplomats and intelligence officers. In its efforts to become and remain a global superpower, however, the Soviet Union steadily built up a huge army of diplomats, intelligence officers, journalists, and academics who gradually assembled a critical mass of information on the West, which eventually undermined

some of

the certainties of a system already

decaying from within. In Mikhail Gorbachev the Soviet Union at last found a leader

who, though imbued with many traditional dogmas and misconcep-

was well aware that the Communist system was losing its way, and was ready to listen to fresh ideas. Gorbachev's most influential adviser when he took power was an academic who knew the West from personal experience, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Yakovlev, ambassador in Canada from 1973 to 1983, a man whose vision was only slightly dimmed by the mists of Marxism-Leninism. But Gorbachev's new thinking was also powerfully influenced by his many briefings by the KGB, which grew dramatically less alarmist as Operation RYAN became discredited. By 1987, however, the extent and the pace of Gorbachev's new thinking had become too much for Viktor Chebrikov. He used the tions of the outside world,

1

10th anniversary of Feliks Dzerzhinsky's birth to revive the old con-

spiracy theory of a gigantic plot by Western intelligence services to

spread ideological subversion, Trotskyism included:

One

of the main targets of the subversive activity of the

is still our society's moral and the Soviet philosophy. That is why the subversive centers spare no effort to carry out acts of ideological subversion, step up their attempts to discredit Marxist-Leninist theory and Communist Party policy, and

imperialist states' special services

and

political potential

seek in every

way

.

.

.

to discredit the Soviet state's historical

path and the practice of socialist construction.

To

this

end

bourgeois ideologists are reworking their threadbare bag-

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

625

and they not infrequently draw arguments for their insinuations from the arsenal of Trotskyism and other opporgage,

tunist currents.

Chebrikov attacked,

in particular,

two forms of "ideological subver-

sion" currently being practiced by imperialist intelligence agencies.

The

was their attempt to "split the monolithic unity of Party and people, and install political and ideological pluralism." The second was their spreading of "the virus of nationalism," which had produced first

32 "recent provocative sorties by nationalists in the Baltic republics."

is

quite likely that Chebrikov actually believed

much

It

of this nonsense.

it. By 1987, who had grasped that the traditional conspiracy theories had to be somewhat toned down

Gorbachev, however, was

at least mildly

embarrassed by

he was far closer to the more adaptable Kryuchkov,

to

meet the needs of the new thinking. Gorbachev took the unprece-

dented step of taking Kryuchkov, traveling incognito, with him on his first trip

Washington

to

in

December 1987

to sign a treaty

elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, the

on the

first

treaty

reducing the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers. Never before had a Soviet leader been

the

accompanied on a

visit to

the

West by the head of

FCD. 33 In the

summer

of 1988 Gorbachev paid a

"purposeful work" of the leadership of the

improving their

warm

tribute to the

KGB and GRU,

activities in the conditions created

"aimed

at

by the present stage

of the development of our society and of the unfolding of democratic processes." 34

By

then, however, Chebrikov's days as

chairman of the

KGB

were already numbered. Hejvas succeeded by Kryuchkov in October 1988, tho ugh he remained in the Politburo for another eleven rrirmtfr^tgTr^^ hiis -plagelp Kryucfik ov. The appointment

head of the KGB's foreign intelligence arm chairman was evidence both of the prestige of the FCD in the Gorbachev era and the importance Gorbachev himself attached to

for the first time ever of the

as

its

briefing

by

it.

Kryuchkov gave entitled

"An

his valedictory address as

head of the FCD,

Objective View of the World," at a conference in the

Soviet Foreign Ministry. It

was a remarkable mixture of the old and

new thinking, which bore witness to the extent of the changes in the FCD's assessment of the West since the most alarmist phase of Operation

RYAN

only

five

years earlier. In general he took an optimistic

view. Progress toward disarmament, in particular "the removal of the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

626

threat of major military conflict,"

The

had become a

"fully realizable" goal.

international image of the Soviet Union had been transformed by

perestroika:

The "enemy image,"

the image of the Soviet state as a "total-

itarian" "half-civilized" society,

ological

and

political

being eroded and our ide-

is

opponents are recognizing the pro-

found nature of our reforms and their beneficial

effect

on

foreign policy.

Kryuchkov his

—

also

added a note of

self-criticism

about the

KGB's

—and

world

in

he confessed, "we have always been submerged and stereotypes." More generally:

in

traditional view of the West. In interpreting the business

capitalist countries,

cliches

We

were not good

political strata of

many

at distinguishing

contemporary

between the social and

capitalist society

and the

shades and currents in the dispositions of political

forces in a region or individual country. Unless

objective view of the world, seeing cliches

and stereotyped

it

we have an

unadorned and

ideas, all claims

about the

free of

effective-

ness of our foreign policy operations will be nothing but

empty words. Kryuchkov's address made conspiracy theories tioning Operation fication of

still

clear,

however, that the old suspicions and

lurked at the back of his mind. Without men-

RYAN by name,

he attempted a retrospective justi-

it:

Many

of [the FCD's] former responsibilities have not been removed from the agenda. The principal one of these is not to overlook the immediate danger of nuclear conflict being unleashed.

Kryuchkov American"

also

made

a traditional attack on Western "and above

intelligence services:

These have retained

measure their role of a shock one of the sharp instruments of the imperialist "brake mechanism" on the road to in full

detachment of right-wing

forces,

all

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

627

improvement of the international position. It is no chance occurrence that in the West the wide-ranging campaign of spy mania and brutal provocation employed against Soviet abroad has not

institutions

In the

first

lost its

impetus.

half of 1988 alone, he claimed, there

had been over nine

hundred "provocation operations" against Soviet missions and nationals.

35

Once chairman of the KGB, Kryuchkov's attitude, at least in public, mellowed somewhat as he embarked on an unprecedented public relations campaign. "The KGB," he declared, "should have an image not only

in

our country but worldwide that

beginning of

is

consistent with the

we are pursuing in our work." 36 At the 1989 Kryuchkov became the first chairman in KGB his-

noble goals which

I

believe

tory to receive the United States ambassador in his office.

few months he and other senior

Over the next

KGB officers gave interviews and press

conferences to Western correspondents and starred in a film The

KGB

which was offered for sale to foreign television companies. Kryuchkov also gave a series of press and television interviews for Today,

and appeared at confirmation hearings before the Supreme Soviet to answer ninety-six questions put to him by deputies. Though he was confirmed as chairman by a large majority there were twenty-six abstentions and six votes against. Throughout the public relations campaign Kryuchkov's basic Soviet audiences

message never varied. The

KGB followed

"strict

observance of Soviet

—

was under "very strict Party control," gladly accepted and indeed had suggested supervision of its work by a new Supreme Soviet Committee on Defense and State Security, had distanced itself totally from the horrors of its Stalinist past, and proposed "an entire system legality,"

—

of guarantees" to ensure that they did not return. 37 Professional and

remarkably novel though Kryuchkov's public relations were, he oversold his product. His claim that

"The

KGB

has no secret informers,

only assistants" flew in the face of the experience of millions of Russians

—

as Boris Yeltsin told

him

to his face:

most of the major organizations have no network of agents from the State Security bodies, and this causes great moral damage to our In the

place,

first

assistants but a proper

society.

.

.

.

This

democratization.

is

quite intolerable for us in this period of

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

628

KGB active measures campaign designed to discredit him, was elected chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet in May

Despite a Yeltsin

1990. After his election, he took the unprecedented step of refusing to

accept a in the

The was

KGB guard.

His security was entrusted instead to a new unit

Supreme Soviet

secretariat.

KGB

biggest change in

38

foreign operations during the late 1980s

and public relations. In 1990 Leonid Shebarhead of the FCD to be publicly identified. A

at the level of rhetoric

shin

became the

first

Pravda correspondent was, for the quarters at Yasenevo.

bidding than

when

it

He found

first

time, allowed into

Shebarshin's office

was occupied by Kryuchkov.

Shebarshin's small grandson stands on a shelf.

books on the

FCD

somewhat

A

head-

less for-

photograph of

The bookcase contains

KGB published in the West, as well as works by Solzhenit-

syn and other authors formerly condemned as anti-Soviet. "Nowadays," Shebarshin told Pravda, positive in

world

politics, to

international relations,

and

"we

are striving to bring out everything

take every opportunity to improve further

to arrive at mutually acceptable solutions."

Shebarshin does not take kindly, however, to revisionist interpretations of

FCD

who

are

history: "I

now

Union." Nor, he

must

in

am

quite categorically unable to agree with those

trying to place the

no case

insists, fail

blame

for the

Cold

War on

the Soviet

has the threat from the West disappeared:

to look into everything for intrigues

"We

and machina-

tions of hostile forces." 39

Though most changes in the FCD during the first five years of Gorbachev era were cosmetic, there were at least two changes of note at the operational level. The first was in active measures. When Gorbachev became general secretary it was business as usual in this area, and he showed no sign of seeking to interfere with it. Between 1975 and 1985 Service A (Active Measures) had grown from about fifty the

to eighty officers at Yasenevo, with a further thirty to forty in the

Novosti Press Agency

offices at Pushkin Square. Kryuchkov himself was an enthusiastic supporter of active measures, with, in Gordievsky's view, an exaggerated faith in their effectiveness. He would frequently discuss major active measures campaigns with the International De-

partment of the Central Committee, which tended to share his enthusiasm. Early in 1985 L. F. Sotskov, the first deputy head of Service A, told

Gordievsky that the service was concentrating on three key

themes: material calculated to discredit

all

aspects of American policy;

a campaign to promote conflict between the United States and

its

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

NATO

allies;

and support

it

Western peace movements. One of the

A at the beginning of the Gorbachev era was

proudest boasts of Service that

for

629

had organized the heckling of President Reagan's address to the

European Parliament in May 1985. A senior FCD officer dealing with measures assured Gordievsky that the KGB had even influenced

active

the slogans used by the hecklers.

In principle, about 25 percent of the time of

PR

officers in

was supposed to be spent on active measures, though in practice it was often less. Gordievsky noted a wide variation in the quality of forgeries and other material produced by Service A, which reflected the distinctly uneven quality of its personnel. About 50 percent of its officers were specialists in active measures; the rest were rejects from other departments. Few of the ablest and most ambitious FCD recruits wanted jobs in Service A; it rarely offered the opportunity of overseas postings and was widely regarded as a career dead end. Several active measures had to be aborted as a result of Gordievsky's defection, among them schemes to discredit Keston College in Britain, which monitors religious activity in the Soviet Union, and to fabricate a statement by Mrs. Thatcher on defense policy to the chairman of the residencies

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

During the

late

40

1980s active measures operations in the West,

though not the Third World, became

less aggressive.

The

articles,

pamphlets, and speeches attacking Reagan and Thatcher that Service

A

had prepared

ence, such as signs too of

in the early

Arne

1980s for use by Western agents of influ-

Petersen, were gradually phased out. There were

growing Soviet disenchantment with the increasingly

credited front organizations. In

serving president of the in self-criticism.

"The

1986

Romesh Chandra,

dis-

the long-

World Peace Council, was obliged to indulge made of the president's work," he

criticisms

acknowledged, "require to be heeded and necessary corrections made."

The main "correction" made was

the appointment of a

general secretary, Johannes Pakaslahti,

who was

Chandra

WPC. Changes

as the leading figure in the

however, were insufficient to revive the

new Finnish

intended to displace of personnel,

WPC's fading influence.

the chairman of the Soviet Peace Committee,

In 1988

Genrikh Borovik,

WPC to become "a more WPC lost most of its remaining credibil-

Kryuchkov's brother-in-law, called for the pluralistic organization." ity in

1989

when

it

the Soviet Union. 41 priorities

The

admitted that 90 percent of

Though

there has been

its

income came from in methods and

some change

during the Gorbachev era, there

is

no sign that active mea-

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

630

sures themselves are likely to be discontinued.

The

International De-

partment of the Central Committee continues to supervise "gray" or semicovert active measures through front organizations and other

channels with a partly visible Soviet presence. In cooperation with the International Department, Service

measures, whose Soviet origin

is

A conducts "black" or covert active

kept concealed.

The chief area of current active measures operations by both the Department and Service A is the Third World. During A produced about ten to fifteen forgeries of U.S. official documents a year. Some were "silent forgeries," shown in confidence to influential figures in the Third World to alert them to allegedly hostile operations by the CIA or other American agencies. Others were used to promote media campaigns: among them, in 1987 a forged letter from the CIA director William Casey on plans to destabilize the Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi; in 1988 a forged document from the National Security Council containing instructions from President Reagan to destabilize Panama; and in 1989 a forged letter from the South African foreign minister "Pik" Botha to the State Department referring to a secret agreement for military, intelligence, and economic cooperation with the United States. 42 Probably the most successful active measure in the Third World during the early years of the Gorbachev era, promoted by a mixture of overt propaganda and covert action by Service A, was the attempt to blame AIDS on American biological warfare. The story International

the late 1980s Service

originated in the

summer

of 1983 in an article published in the pro-

Soviet Indian newspaper Patriot, alleging that the

AIDS virus had been

"manufactured" during genetic engineering experiments trick,

Maryland.

with great In

its

effect

Initially,

the story had

little

impact, but

by the Russian Literaturnaya Gazeta

resurrected form, the

AIDS

story

in

it

Fort Dewas revived

at

October 1985.

was bolstered by a report from

German, Russian-born biophysicist, Professor Jacob which sought to demonstrate through "circumstantial evidence" (since thoroughly discredited) that the virus had been artificially synthesized at Fort Detrick from two natural, existing viruses, VISNA and HTLV- 1 Thus assisted by quasi-scientific jargon, the AIDS fabrication not merely swept through the Third World but also took in some of the Western media. In October 1986 the conservative British Sunday Express made an interview with Professor Segal the basis of its main front-page story. In the first six months of 1987 alone the story received major coverage in over forty Third World countries. 43 a retired East Segal,

.

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

631

At the very height of its success, however, the AIDS active measure was compromised by the "new thinking" in Soviet foreign policy. Gorbachev told a Soviet media conference in July 1987: "We tell the truth and nothing but the truth." He and his advisers were clearly concerned that Western exposure of Soviet disinformation threatened

new Soviet image in the West. Faced and the repudiation of the AIDS story

to take a little of the gloss oif the

with

official

American

protests

community, including the leading Soviet AIDS expert, Viktor M. Zhdanov, the Kremlin for the first time showed signs of public embarrassment at a successful active measures campaign. In August 1987, U.S. officials were told in Moscow that the

by the international

AIDS came

story

was

scientific

officially

disowned. Soviet press coverage of the story

halt; it has not been mentioned at all by media since September 1988. 44 In 1990, however, the story was circulating not merely in the Third World but also in the more

to

an almost complete

Soviet still

gullible parts of the

Western media.

A further interview with Professor

Segal, along with film of Fort Detrick, the alleged

home

of the

AIDS

was featured prominently in a documentary on AIDS produced by a West German television company in January 1990 for Britain's Channel Four and Deutsche Rundfunk WDR, Cologne. 45 The official abandonment of the AIDS story in August 1987 was followed by other equally scurrilous anti-American active measures in the Third World, some of which also had an impact on the West. One of the most successful was the "baby parts" story, alleging that Americans were butchering Latin American children and using their bodies for organ transplants. In the summer of 1988, the story was taken up by a Brussels-based Soviet front organization, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), and publicized extensively in the press of over fifty countries. In September 1988, a French Communist member of the European Parliament, Danielle de March, proposed a motion condemning alleged trafficking in "baby parts" and cited an IADL report as evidence for her charges. The motion passed on a show of hands in a poorly attended session. Among those taken in by the baby parts fabrication were groups as remote from virus,

the

KGB as the Jehovah's Witnesses,

in their

copies printed in fifty-four languages.

human

who

published the story in 1989

magazine Awake, which had a circulation of eleven million hearts were

on

and $1 million each. 46

sale in the

Among

circulating in the Third

World

A Greek newspaper reported that

United States for between $100,000

other active measures fabrications in

still

1990 was the claim that the United

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

632

was developing, or had actually developed, an "ethnic weapon" that would kill only nonwhites. By 1990, the "new thinking" of the Gorbachev era had dramatically reduced the level of anti-Western disinformation in the Soviet press, but still had little effect on Service States

A

operations in the Third World.

Gorbachev era also saw some change in the Moscow's growing distaste for some of its terrorist associates in the Third World was particularly evident in the case of Colonel Qaddafi. The turning point in Soviet attitudes to Qaddafi was the demonstration by anti-Qaddafi Libyans on April 17, 1984, outside the Libyan embassy, renamed the People's Bureau, in St. James's Square, London. In the course of the demonstration a Libyan intelligence officer opened fire with a Sterling submachine gun from a first-floor window, killing police constable Yvonne Fletcher. Britain broke off diplomatic relations and expelled more than sixty Libyan officials and other Qaddafi supporters. Pravda reported the killing with what at the time was unusual frankness:

The

early years of the

KGB's attitude to

terrorism.

Shooting suddenly started

.

.

.

and a British policewom-

an died and several other people were wounded as a sult.

.

.

.

What

is

re-

more, Washington spread the news that one

of its reconnaissance satellites supposedly picked up a coded

message from Tripoli to London

in

which People's Bureau

staff

were allegedly given the order to shoot

tors.

This news was followed the very next day by the British

at

demonstra-

authorities' decision to break off diplomatic relations with

Libya.

Though

the official Libyan denial of involvement in the problem

duly reported, Pravda readers were

been

fired

left in little

was

doubt that the shot had

from the People's Bureau.

The KGB, however, knew Fletcher than Pravda told

its

far

readers.

more about the

On

killing of

April 18, 1984, the

WPC

London

residency was informed by telegram that the Center had received able information that the shooting

reli-

had been personally ordered by Qaddafi. The telegram revealed that an experienced hit man from the Libyan intelligence station in East Berlin had been flown in to London to supervise the operation. Thereafter the Center tended to show some sympathy for President Reagan's description of Qaddafi as a "flaky

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

633

barbarian." Qaddafi's three-hour speech to a People's Congress in

March

1985, calling for the hunting

down

of "stray dogs," was widely

assessed in the Center as providing further evidence that he

ing unhinged. action in

a

47

"We

—an entire people liquidating

opponents at home and abroad He announced the formation of

its

broad daylight," declared Qaddafi.

new Mutarabbisoun ("Always Ready")

terrorists

was becom-

have the right to take a legitimate and sacred

force of 150 highly trained

ready to carry out liquidations around the globe. 48

The Center also looked askance at Qaddafi's willingness to supply money and Soviet Bloc arms and explosives to the Provisional IRA. In the late 1970s, after the British press reported that the PIRA had received Soviet arms, an urgent inquiry by a senior

KGB

officer

arms had come from Libya. At that point Moscow took the formalistic view that it was not responsible for what Qaddafi did with his vast Soviet arms purchases. By the mid-1980s, however, it took a much less relaxed view and became concerned by the adverse publicity caused by terrorists' use of Soviet weapons. On a number of occasions during the 1970s and 1980s, the PIRA made approaches to KGB officers in Dublin and to officers from the London residency visiting Belfast under journalistic cover. The approaches were reported to the Center, which refused permission for them to be followed up. The residency in Dublin was usually reluctant to make contact with any illegal group because of what it regarded as established that the

the near-impossibility of keeping secrets in the Irish Republic. officers

KGB

claimed that merely by listening to conversations in a number

of public houses frequented by Sinn Fein supporters they were able to learn a surprising amount. intelligence

it

received. In

ment, Nikolai Gribin,

The Center was

less

pleased with the Irish

February 1985, the head of the Third Depart-

who had

published a book on Northern Ireland

a few years earlier, visited Dublin to inspect the try to

improve

its

creasing use of Ireland as a training ground for iarize themselves

KGB

residency and

performance. The Center by then was making

young

in-

illegals to famil-

life by stays of six months or what the KGB considered more

with Irish and British

more before moving on to work

against

important targets. 49 Part of the Center's growing reluctance during the mid-1980s to involve itself with terrorist groups derived

from an increasing, though exaggerated, fear that the Soviet Union was becoming a terrorist target.

In April 1985, a circular telegram from the Center signed by

Kryuchkov himself referred

to a series of explosions in Bulgaria during

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

634

the previous August and September.

Though

the culprits had yet to be

tracked down, Kryuchkov claimed that the sophisticated nature of the devices used pointed to the possible involvement of one of the Western "special services." Kryuchkov's natural tendency to conspiracy theory led

him

to suspect a

Western plot

to use terrorism to destabilize the

The use of Bulgarian emigres to carry out terrorist acts might, he feared, become a precedent for similar operations in other socialist countries. Kryuchkov suggested that residencies consult local Soviet Bloc.

police forces to emphasize the need for international cooperation

against the terrorist menace.

Such consultation

begun. During his four years as

Guk had

London

in fact

had already

from 1980 to 1984,

resident,

approached the police on about a dozen occasions with

infor-

from the Middle East. Guk's primary concern was to alert the police to threats to Soviet targets, but he occasionally passed on intelligence about possible attacks on non-Soviet mation about

citizens also.

terrorists, usually

50

At about the time that Gordievsky received Kryuchkov's lar

circu-

telegram on the Bulgarian explosions, he also received a personal

request from the head of Directorate S (Illegals and Special Operations),

Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov (formerly resident

New

in

York), for

a bizarre collection of items related to terrorism and special operations.

Perhaps the oddest request was for a copy of the feature film

Who Dares

which Drozdov seemed to believe might reveal some of the operational methods of the British SAS. Other material requested included intelligence on left-wing terrorist groups, British "special miliWins,

and murders in strange or mystewanted details of bulletproof which it believed were being manu-

tary units," arms-dealing operations,

rious circumstances. Directorate S also

two kilos, Drozdov was a devoted fan of the

vests weighing less than

factured in Britain.

writer Frederick

Forsyth; he told Gordievsky that his novel The Fourth Protocol was "essential reading."

The book described what Drozdov

ultimate fantasy of a

KGB

regarded' as the

special operations expert: the explosion

by

Soviet agents of a small nuclear device near a U.S. airbase in Britain to

power a

reflected in part a desire to be

informed

just before a general election, with the

aim of bringing

left-wing neutralist government.

Drozdov's shopping

list

on special operations and terrorist Gordievsky that he was engaged in

activity.

at least

But

it

was also

clear to

contingency planning for

KGB special operations in Britain. Drozdov asked the London residency to obtain information on the leasing of empty warehouses and

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

635

gave Gordievsky the impression that he was looking for storage space

weapons and equipment. Some of the other information he re51 quested was to help devise cover for a KGB operation. There is little doubt, however, that for Kryuchkov fear of the spread of terrorism to the Soviet Union outweighed the attraction of for

Drozdov's schemes for a new wave of potentially risky special operations in the West.

of the

KGB

in

Once Kryuchkov succeeded Chebrikov

as

chairman

October 1988, the need for East- West collaboration

became a major theme in the unprecedented round of speeches and interviews on which he embarked. The hijacking of an Ilyushin transport plane from the Caucasus to Israel in December 1988 "ushered in," according to Kryuchkov, "a whole new era in our work." 52 Over the previous fifteen years there had against international terrorism

been

fifty

mostly unpublicized attempted hijackings in the Soviet

Union, which had been stopped with considerable loss of the

Armenian

however, the them, as lis]."

As

hijackers

KGB,

we were

demanded

to fly to Israel in

life.

When

53

December

1988,

according to Kryuchkov, actually "encouraged

sure

we would reach understanding [with "Not a single

a result, instead of another bloodbath,

the Israechild,

a single rescue operative and not even a single terrorist suffered."

54

nor

The

Soviet foreign minister,

Eduard Shevardnadze, publicly thanked the

Israelis for their help in

ending the hijacking peacefully and returning

the hijackers. So too did the

KGB.

General Vitali Ponomaryov, one of

Kryuchkov's deputy chairmen, held an unprecedented press conference to give an account of the hijacking to Western correspondents. It was, first example of such cooperation between the Soviet Union and other countries." Another of Kryuchkov's deputies, General Geni Ageev, gave further details to Tass, including the fact that the drug addict leading the hijacking, Pavel Yakshyants, had been given drugs by the KGB "because we thought it might calm him down." 55 During 1989, Kryuchkov made a series of speeches calling for cooperation between the KGB and the CIA and other Western intelli-

he declared, "the

gence services in fighting terrorism:

One wing

of terrorism

is

directed against the

other against the Soviet Union.

overcoming If

we

this

all

USA, and

the

have an interest

in

most dreadful phenomenon of this century.

we shall do away with Some remains of terrorism may be

take most decisive measures,

this evil rather quickly. left

We

over but they will be remains and not terrorism

itself.

56

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

636

In a speech to the Supreme Soviet in July and later in a newspaper

Kryuchkov underlined the coming danger of nuclear terrora pressing reason for East- West intelligence cooperation:

interview,

ism as

At the Supreme Soviet hearings I was guilty of an inaccuracy when I said that several tons of enriched uranium had disappeared in the world. Not several tons, but several hundred tons and where they went we do not know, although we can guess. tial

There

is

so

much knowledge and

around the world today that

together a nuclear device and use nation, not just one city.

Nor can

technological poten-

easy enough to put

it

is

it

to blackmail

I

an entire

rule out the desire

by

somebody to put nuclear weapons to use. There are such criminals. In short,

we

are prepared to cooperate in the drive

57 against terrorism and drug trafficking.

In October 1989, Directorate, which

Kryuchkov announced the abolition of the Fifth had hitherto monitored dissident intellectuals (and

whose responsibilities in a watered-down form were reabsorbed by the Second Chief Directorate) and the creation of a new Directorate for the Defense of the Soviet Constitutional System to coordinate the struggle against "the orgy of terrorism which has swept the world since the early

revealed that during the 1970s the KGB had identified in Union "more than 1,500 individuals with terrorist designs." 58 Simultaneously, Kryuchkov dispatched two recently retired senior KGB officers, Lieutenant General Fyodor Shcherbak, former deputy head of the Second Chief Directorate, and Major General Valentin Zvezdenkov, a former counterterrorist expert from the same director1970s."

He

the Soviet

ate, to

take part with former senior

in California to discuss

Kryuchkov

set clear limits to the

intelligence collaboration he

Intelligence

is

cific features,

CIA officers in

a

a private conference

methods of combating terrorism. 59

game without

which

I

unprecedented peacetime

was proposing: rules.

There are certain spe-

regret to say, prevent us

agreement with anyone on

from reaching

how and according to which

rules

we should conduct intelligence operations against one another. But I think we should always have decency, even in our business. 60

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

One

637

of the consequences of the limited collaboration proposed by

Kryuchkov was some decline

in the traditional

demonization of West-

As recently as the final years of the Brezhnev when denouncing the CIA, commonly excoriated "the repulsive bared teeth of the monster fed on the money of unsuspecting taxpayers, a monster which trampled underfoot all norms of ern intelligence services. era, the Soviet press,

61 morality and insulted the dignity of an entire nation."

who have

mania have been the two brightest radical the

FCD

Among

those

taken the lead in attacking the neo-Stalinist tradition of spy of Kryuchkov within

critics

during the 1970s, the British expert Mikhail Lyubimov, dis-

missed in 1980, and the American expert Oleg Kalugin, formerly the

FCD's youngest

general, banished by

Kryuchkov

careful to apportion

blame to the

to Leningrad, also in

1980. 62

Though

of both East and West, version of

own

its

Lyubimov pours scorn on

roll's

The

beasts

question

the

KGB's traditional

history:

Even the minutest successes used bronze.

intelligence services

become cast in solemn compared to Lewis Cara circle and answering the to

secret services could be

and birds running

"Who

is

in

the winner?" with the chorus cry:

"We

are!"

Like

its

counterparts in the West, the

"undermined constructive diplomatic

KGB had propagated spy mania, efforts,"

deterioration of the international situation." satellite intelligence

and "contributed

Lyubimov

to the

believes that

has "a stabilizing effect" by reassuring both sides

about the possibility of surprise attack. But in 1989 he became the

KGB resident to call, in the Soviet press,

former

size of the 63

first

for a reduction in the

FCD as well as of the KGB's huge domestic security appara-

Lyubimov published Legend About a Legend, a farce lampooning the enormously expensive secret war between the KGB and the CIA. Moscow News suggested that it would make "a good musical comedy." 64

tus.

In 1990

Oleg Kalugin began public criticism of the sacked as deputy head of the Leningrad

KGB

KGB

after

number of politically embarrassing bribery made a thinly disguised attack on the paranoid strain

attempts to investigate a cases.

65

in the

In 1988 he

FCD

he was

in 1987, following his

during Kryuchkov's fourteen years at

its

head:

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

638

Just a few years ago those at the august rostrum

would have

us believe that the reasons for the different distortions in our life

lay not in the defects of the system but in hostile encircle-

ment, in the intensifying pressure being brought to bear on socialism by the forces of imperialism, and that the antisocial

and the crimes against the state they committed were a consequence of hostile propaganda and activity of individuals

CIA

provocations.

was for expressing similarly unorthodox opinions in 1980 that Kaluhad been sacked by Kryuchkov from the FCD. Though criticizing American covert operations, Kalugin also attacked the KGB's traditional demonization of the CIA. While head of the KR line in Washington during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Kalugin had been impressed by intelligence which indicated that the CIA took a much more realistic view than the Pentagon of the outcome of the Vietnam War: It

gin

On quite a few occasions I have had a CIA staff members, although they did selves as such.

locutors I

They were highly

chance to meet with not introduce them-

refined

who avoided extremes in

and educated interAlthough

their judgments.

did not delude myself over their friendly smiles,

them

nevertheless inclined to perceive

were not necessarily burdened by

I

as individuals

was

who

class hatred for everything

Soviet.

Kalugin praises the current director of the CIA, William Webster, as man "not even ashamed to sour relations with the White House when

a

he was defending a just cause." 66 He plainly does not feel as warmly about Kryuchkov. In 1990 Kalugin dismissed Kryuchkov's he

felt

more than a cosmetic

reforms as

little

shadow

in absolutely every sphere of

is

KGB's new image

is

exercise.

Like the rest of the world, the

intelligence

KGB

failed to foresee either the speed

in 1989.

But

it

may

Communist

rule in Eastern

nonetheless have been the

agency to sense that the Soviet Bloc created

at the

first

end of

World War was doomed. During the early and mid-1980s was already a growing exasperation combined with fatalism in the

the Second there

"The KGB's arm or

All the talk about the

no more than camouflage." 67

or the timing of the disintegration of

Europe that began

life.

The Gorbachev Era 1985Center about the future of Eastern Europe, and at the

end of the decade. By

639

it

gathered

momentum

the beginning of the Gorbachev era Gor-

dievsky was hearing increasing numbers of complaints about the unreliability

of the

Communist regimes and outbursts such

better to adopt a policy of 'Fortress Soviet

the lot of them!"

were straws

Though not

in the

in

1989 was to replace the

satirically entitled "Sinatra

allowing the states of Eastern Europe to "do

Three

"We'd do

as:

—and have done with

yet intended seriously, such outbursts

wind of change that

Brezhnev Doctrine with the

Union'

states in Eastern

it

Europe were,

their

for

Doctrine,"

way."

somewhat

reasons, already giving the Center serious cause for anxiety

different

by the time

Gorbachev succeeded Chernenko as general secretary in March 1985. The first was Poland. The FCD had been severely shaken by the mushroom growth of Solidarity in 1980-81. Though it had admired the skill with which Jaruzelski, the Polish army, and the SB had carried out a military coup and crushed Solidarity in December 1981, it was better aware than most Western observers that it had achieved only a temporary respite.

The Center's main source of anxiety was the visible fact that the in Poland of a Polish Pope eclipsed that of the Polish government. The days were long past when any Soviet leader was moral authority

tempted to repeat

Stalin's scornful question at the

World War: "How many

divisions has the

end of the Second

Pope?" In retrospect, the

Polish experts in the Center were inclined to trace the origins of the Polish crisis to the election in October 1978 of the Polish Cardinal

Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul seven months see

later,

68

When

he had visited Poland

almost a quarter of the Polish people had come to

and hear him; almost

tour on television.

II.

all

the rest witnessed his triumphal nine-day

At the end of

his progress

through Poland, as the

Pope bade farewell to his former home city of Krakow, where, he said, "every stone and every brick is dear to me," men and women wept uncontrollably in the streets. The contrast between the political bankruptcy of the regime and the moral authority of the church was plain for all to see. 69

Opinions were divided within the Center on the likelihood of

KGB

involvement in the assassination attempt against the Pope in

About half of those to whom Gordievsky spoke were convinced KGB would no longer contemplate a "wet affair" of this kind even indirectly through the Bulgarians. The other half, however, suspected that Department 8 of Directorate S, which was responsible for 1981.

that the

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

640

had been involved; some told Gordievsky they only had failed. The lack of authority of the Communist government in Poland was laid bare once again when John Paul II returned in 1983, urging those who opposed the regime to turn to the protection of the church. In October 1984, the Polish church gained a new martyr when the SB religious-affairs department abducted and murdered the pro-Solidarity priest Father Jerzy Popieluszko. Half a million attended his funeral. Walesa declared at the graveside: "Solidarity is alive because you have special operations,

regretted that the attempt

given your

life

for it." Desperate to distance himself

from the crime,

Jaruzelski ordered a public trial of the murderers, thus causing a

wave of alarm

in the

FCD. At

new

the end of 1984 a circular from the

Center ordered a series of active measures during 1985 designed to discredit the "reactionary"

The

John Paul

Center's concerns about East

from those about Poland. Though the unpopularity of the

chev era

it

When

German

70

Germany were quite different

KGB had no illusions about the

regime, at the beginning of the Gorbait

centered instead on what

tance of the East lead.

Communist

did not yet believe that

Its anxieties

II.

was it

leader Erich

in

danger of losing control.

regarded as the growing reluc-

Honecker

to follow

Moscow's

SED

the seventy-eight-year-old Walter Ulbricht retired as

general secretary in 1971,

Moscow had wanted

Willi Stoph to succeed

When Honecker had been chosen instead, the embittered Stoph had warned Moscow that Honecker's nationalism threatened the future of Soviet-GDR relations. And so it proved. him.

The domineering behavior of cers that

Soviet diplomats

had been tolerated by Ulbricht gave

rise

and

KGB

offi-

under Honecker to

a series of incidents. In the mid-1970s, following the arrest for drunken

driving of a

KGB

officer

from

its

Karlshorst headquarters, the

KGB

chief General Anatoli Ivanovich Lazarev

use of Nazi methods against a fraternal

had complained about "the power." Honecker then com-

more forcibly about Lazarev. At his insistence Lazarev Moscow. The Soviet ambassador, Petr Andreevich Abrasimov, was recalled after similar complaints by Honecker about his viceregal attitude in 1983; once back in Moscow he was put in

plained even

was

recalled to

charge of tourism. Both Erich Mielke, the East

German

minister of

and Markus Wolf, the veteran head of the HVA, complained to the Center that Honecker was restricting the intimacy of Soviet-GDR intelligence collaboration. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Mielke and Wolf were themselves scarcely on state security,

The Gorbachev Era 1985speaking terms. There were endless discussions in the Center,

641

some of

them witnessed by Gordievsky in Grushko's office, on how to strengthen Mielke's and Wolfs hands against Honecker, and how to prevent Mielke and Wolf themselves from coming to blows. In 1985, however, the Center did not yet foresee that perestroika in the Soviet

Union would add a further element of tension to relations with the German Democratic Republic. 71 The East European state that the Center believed to be in greatest danger of collapse at the beginning of the Gorbachev era was Nicolae Ceau§escu's corrupt and megalomaniac neo-Stalinist dictatorship in Rumania, already semidetached from the Warsaw Pact. A long assessment by FCD Department Eleven (Eastern Europe Liaison) in 1983 forecast that, with Rumania already on the verge of bankruptcy, there was a serious danger of economic collapse within the next few years. In that event, it predicted, loss of control by the regime might well lead Rumania to turn toward the West. By the time Gorbachev succeeded Chernenko, that prospect was being taken very seriously. During his last two years in London as deputy resident and resident, Gordievsky received several requests from the Center for intelligence on Western attitudes to Rumania. 72 In the end, Ceau§escu's dictatorship was almost the last of the East European Communist regimes to succumb to the tide of democratic revolution in 1989, though the end, when it arrived, came with even greater speed, and brutality, than in

Warsaw Pact. Communist order

the other countries of the

By

in Eastern Europe began to was probably already reconciled to the disintegration of what its internal documents commonly called the "Socialist Commonwealth." That disintegration, however, threatened to disrupt the elaborate network of Soviet Bloc intelligence collaboration, which went back to the early years of the Cold War. In every country of Eastern Europe, the local security service, modeled on the KGB, was seen by its inhabitants as one of the main instruments of oppression and instantly became one of the chief targets of the democratic reformers. By early 1990 most had been emasculated. In most parts of Eastern Europe the foreign intelligence services, which had hitherto been an integral part of the security services on the model of the KGB's FCD,

the time the

collapse, the Center

turned themselves into independent agencies in order to try to survive.

By

the beginning of 1990 the

KGB

could no longer count

German HVA in NATO and West Germany; on the Czechoslovak

automatically, as in the past, on the help of the East its

operations against

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

642

StB and the Polish SB

work

against France; or on the Bulgarian and Greece. The intelligence alliance with East Germany was already doomed. In a reunited Germany the external HVA, like the internal SSD, will cease to exist. Dismantling the KGB apparatus in Karlshorst will be an enormous task; at a stroke

DS

in its

against Yugoslavia, Turkey,

the Soviet

Union

will lose its largest foreign intelligence base.

The end

of the Soviet-GDR intelligence alliance threatens to compromise some of the

tem

KGB's own

in the Center,

intelligence operations.

known

as

The

central name-trace sys-

SOUD (System for Operational and Insti-

German computer. Hitherto the Cuban as Warsaw Pact intelligence services have had access to it. 73 The KGB's alliances in Latin America were also threatened by crumbling of the Soviet bloc. Though Castro has lasted longer than

tutional Data), uses an East

well as the

the

Honecker, he showed himself even more ill-disposed to Gorbachev's

"new

By

thinking."

length.

The

situation

Chebrikov himself ance.

74

It is

KGB

1987, the

already complaining that the

was judged

visited

liaison mission in

DGI

Cuban

Cuba

Havana was

was holding

it

at arm's

to be so serious in the Center that

to try to restore the intelligence

unlikely that he secured a lasting improvement.

of the Sandinistas, probably against

KGB expectations,

The

alli-

defeat

in the Nicara-

guan elections of February 1990 placed the future of the four Soviet sigint stations in Nicaragua at risk. Castro's increasingly uncertain prospects of survival as his huge Soviet subsidies were scaled down raised doubts about the future of the

Lourdes

The

in

much

larger sigint station at

Cuba.

greatest threat to the future of the

headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square

it

KGB is its own past.

From

the greatest peacetime persecution and the largest concentration in

European

history.

its

directed during the Stalinist era

The people's deputy and

camps

Soviet sporting hero Yuri

Vlasov told the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989: "The

KGB

is

not a service but a real underground empire which has not yet yielded its secrets,

except for opening up the graves." 75

nervousness about revealing the contents of its

awareness of the threat they pose.

independence

in

Its

its

The

Center's acute

archives demonstrates

preparations for Lithuanian

1990 had as a major priority the disposal of hundreds

of thousands of embarrassing files. Radio Vilnius reported that the chairman of the Lithuanian KGB, Eduardas Eismontas, had virtually

admitted that

much

of his archives had been shredded or removed to

Moscow. Soon afterward Eismontas

resigned. 76

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

Those concern

files

that cause the greatest

embarrassment to the

foreign operations. During the

its

643

late

1980s

it

KGB

fought a long

though hopeless rearguard action to avoid accepting responsibility for

March 1989 Poland's

Forest. In

nerved

itself to

NKVD

in the

Katyn

Communist government massacre on the KGB. The

Polish

the wartime massacre of Polish officers by the

finally

last

pin the blame for the

documents found in the pockets of the murdered offihad been prisoners of the NKVD at the time of another execution. For year, however, the KGB press bureau

press published

cers proving that they their

continued to blame the killings on the

Germans and

refused to "antici-

When

77 pate" the long-delayed findings of a Soviet-Polish commission.

Moscow News challenged the KGB to "confirm or deny" the Polish evidence, threats were made against its editor-in-chief. NKVD veterans with information on the Katyn massacre told Moscow News the KGB had ordered them not to reveal the truth. 78 Not until April 1990, when President Gorbachev handed President Jaruzelski a portfolio of docu-

ments proving the

bow

NKVD's

role in the massacre, did the

KGB finally

and accept responsibility. Over the next few months several more mass graves of Polish officers were uncovered. to the inevitable

The even in the

Center's apprehensions at the potential embarrassments file

of a single foreigner are well illustrated by the case of

the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. While stationed in Budapest in

1944-45, Wallenberg saved the lives of

giving

them Swedish diplomatic

many thousands

protection.

Soon

after the

of Jews by

Red Army

occupied Hungary, however, he mysteriously disappeared. Ever since his disappearance the

Swedish government, the Wallenberg family and

the Raoui Wallenberg Society have repeatedly pressed veal the truth about his fate.

The KGB's

—

Moscow

refusal to release his

to re-

file

led

—

rumors all, sadly, unfounded that Wallenberg was still alive somewhere in the gulag. In 1957 Andrei Gromyko, then deputy foreign minister, handed the Swedish ambassador in Moscow a memoto repeated

randum claiming

that Wallenberg died of a heart attack in a Soviet

prison in 1947. That falsehood

is still

described by the Soviet authorities

as "irrefutable fact." In October 1989, however, an attempt to defuse international pressure for the release of the

KGB

was made on the

file

Wallenberg case by inviting representatives of the Raoul Wallenberg

Nina Lagergren, and his half brother, Moscow. There they were received by

Society, including his half sister,

Guy von

Dardel, to talks in

Vadim Petrovich Pirozhkov,

a deputy chairman of the KGB, and Valentin Mikhailovich Nikoforov, a deputy foreign minister, who

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

644

handed over Wallenberg's passport, some of his personal belongings, and a bogus death certificate dated July 17, 1947, signed by the chief doctor of the Lubyanka Prison. Pirozhkov and Nikoforov expressed "deep regret"

that, despite

"painstaking" searches in the

KGB

ar-

no further documents could be discovered. 79 Andrei Sakharov, among others, was publicly skeptical that such an important KGB file on a foreign diplomat was missing. In reality the file has never gone chives,

is simply considered too embarrassing to make public. What the KGB's file on Wallenberg reveals is that, shortly after arrival of the Red Army in Budapest, the NKVD tried to recruit

astray. It

the

him as an agent. When Wallenberg refused point-blank, the NKVD became worried that he might reveal its approach to him, arrested him, and deported him to the Soviet Union. Further attempts in Moscow to persuade Wallenberg to become a Soviet agent also failed. He was shot not later than 1947. 80

during 1989, the veterans,

To muddy

KGB

the waters of the Wallenberg case

brought in one of

Radomir Bogdanov, then deputy

its

leading active measures

director of the

Academy

of

Sciences Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, as well as vice-chairman of the Soviet Peace

Committee. As resident

in

New

Delhi from 1957 to 1967 Bogdanov had played a leading part in establishing India as

one of the main centers of Soviet active measures. 81

During the spring of 1989, Bogdanov began informing foreign visitors and journalists in Moscow that Wallenberg had acted as intermediary in secret negotiations

during 1944 between Lavrenti Beria and the head

of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. 82

The Moscow New Times, formerly used

as a vehicle for active measures, continued the

smear campaign by

portraying Wallenberg as a playboy, womanizer and friend of Adolf

Eichmann, chief administrator of the Final Solution. 83 The KGB, however, is no longer master of all its own

The democratic

revolution in Eastern Europe confronts

it

secrets.

with the

embarrassing possibility that, as during the Prague Spring in 1968, secrets may escape from the files of its former Soviet Bloc One of those that must surely worry Kryuchkov personally is the

some of its allies.

DS

file on the murder of the Bulgarian emigre writer Georgi September 1978. Some months earlier the Bulgarian general secretary Todor Zhivkov had sought KGB assistance in silencing

Bulgarian

Markov

in

who were attacking him in the Western media. The Center made available to Zhivkov and the Bulgarian Durzharna Sigurnost (DS) the resources of a highly secret KGB emigres like his former protege Markov

laboratory, the successor to the

Kamera

of the Stalinist era, attached

The Gorbachev Era 1985-

645

OTU (Operational-Technical) and under the direct control of the KGB chairman. Kryuchkov personally approved the secondment of General Sergei Mikhailovich Golubev of FCD Directorate K

to Directorate

to liaise with the

in using against

Bulgarian emigres poisons devel-

(Seven years later Golubev was to super-

drugging of Gordievsky with drugs from the same laboratory

vise the in

DS

KGB laboratory.

oped by the

84 an unsuccessful attempt to get him to confess. ) Golubev visited

Sofia three or four times during 1978 to help plan operations against

the emigres.

The first target was a Bulgarian emigre living in Western Europe. The DS smeared surfaces in a room where he was staying with a poison that, once absorbed through the skin, would, according to the

KGB

and leave no

laboratory, prove fatal

became proval,

seriously

ill,

Though

trace.

the target

however, he survived. With Kryuchkov's ap-

Golubev returned

to Sofia to

work out

a

new plan of attack. At

KGB main residency in Washington purchased and sent them to the Center. Directorate OTU

Golubev's request, the several umbrellas

adapted the

tip to

enable

it

to inject the victim with a tiny metal pellet

containing ricin, a highly toxic poison

made from

castor-oil seeds.

Golubev then took the umbrellas to Sofia to instruct a DS assassin in their use. The first fatality was Georgi Markov, then working for the Bulgarian section of the tal

on September

BBC World Service.

11, 1978,

Markov was

Before he died in a hospi-

able to

tell

doctors that he had

been bumped into by a stranger on Waterloo Bridge, for accidentally

prodding him with his umbrella.

a pellet scarcely larger than a pinhead

who

apologized

A tiny stab wound and

were found

in

Markov's

right

by the time of the autopsy the ricin had decomposed. Markov's assassination abated another Bulgarian emigre,

thigh, but

Vladimir Kostov, to the significance of an earlier attack on him in Paris

on August 26. On September 25 a steel pellet of the kind that had killed Markov was removed, still intact, from Kostov's body before the ricin had escaped. The arrest of Todor Zhivkov late in 1989 was followed by

widow in an attempt to discover those Even if the DS files on the Markov case have been shredded or sent to Moscow, there are undoubtedly DS officers who know the truth about his assassination. As Bulgaria prothe

visit to Sofia

of Markov's

responsible for her husband's death.

gresses

Despite

toward democracy they may well be tempted to reveal its

unprecedented public relations campaign, the

most the only unrestructured

institution in

KGB

85

it.

is al-

Gorbachev's Russia. For

all

KGB: THE INSIDE STORY

646

change

his attempts to ited past.

So

is

his

Kryuchkov

his image,

former acolyte

in the First

Fyodorovich Grushko, appointed early in 1991. Today's

KGB

does

first its

is

a relic from a discred-

Chief Directorate, Viktor

deputy chairman of the

best to distance itself

KGB

from both

the Stalinist Terror and the lesser crimes of the "years of stagnation."

As the enormity are

bound

reformed. their

own

later the

of its horrific history emerges, however, Soviet citizens

to ask themselves if such

an organization can ever really be

The peoples of Eastern Europe have already condemned security services created in the

KGB

image of the

too will be disowned by

candlelit vigil that encircled the

KGB

its

own

KGB.

Sooner or

The 1989 commemorate

citizens.

headquarters to

marked the beginning of that disavowal. Like every major modern state, Russia needs both a domestic security service and a foreign intelligence agency. For it to possess an intelligence community worthy of its citizens' respect, however, it will have to close down the KGB and start afresh. its

millions of victims

Appendix A KGB Chairmen

Feliks

1917-26

Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky

(Cheka/GPU/OGPU) Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky

1926-34

(OGPU) Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda

1934-36

(NKVD) Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov

1936-38

(NKVD) 1938-41

Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria

(NKVD) Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov

1941 (Feb.-July)

(NKGB) 1941^3

Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria

(NKVD) 1943^6

Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov

(NKGB/MGB) Viktor Semyonovich

Abakumov

1946-51

(MGB) 647

APPENDIX

648 Sergei Ivanovich Ogoltsov

(Acting;

1951(Aug.-Dec.)

MGB)

Semyon Denisovich Ignatyev

1951-53

(MGB) Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria

1953(Mar.-June)

(MVD) Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov

1953-54

(MVD) Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov

1954-58

(KGB) Aleksandr Nikolayevich Shelepin

1958-61

(KGB) Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny

1961-67

(KGB) Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov

1967-82

(KGB) Vitali Vasilyevich

Fyodorchuk

1982 (May-Dec.)

(KGB) Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov

1982-88

(KGB) Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov

1988-

Appendix B

Heads

of the First Chief Directorate

(Foreign Intelligence)

Mikhail Abramovich Trilisser

1921-29

Artur Khristyanovich Artuzov

1929-34

Abram Aronovich

1934-38

Slutsky

1938(Feb.-July)

Mikhail Shpigelglas (acting head)

Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov

1938-40

Pavel Mikhailovich Fitin

194(M6

Pyotr Vasilyevich Fedotov

1946-49

(deputy chairman Sergei

KI 1947-49)

Romanovich Savchenko

(deputy chairman Vasili Stepanovich

1949-53

KI 1949-51) Ryasnoy

1953(Mar.-June)

Aleksandr Semyonovich Panyushkin

1953-56

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Sakharovsky

1956-71

Fyodor Konstantinovich Mortin

1971-74

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov

1974-78

Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin

1988-

649

Appendix C THE ORGANIZATION OF THE KGB President

Central Committee,

Central Committee,

Politburo

CPSU

State

and Law

Department

KGB

Collegium

KGB

Chairman

Party

Committee

and Deputies

Secretariat

Special Inspectorate 1

I

Personnel Directorate

Finance and

Mobilization

Administrative and

Planning

Directorate

Supply Directorate

Directorate

CHIEF DIRECTORATES 1

1

I

Eighth (Communi-

Border Troops

First (Foreign

Second (Internal

Intelligence)

Security and

cations and

Counter-

Cryptography)

intelligence)

DEPARTMENTS AND SERVICES

DIRECTORATES 3rd (Military

KGB

- - 4th (Transport)

Counterintelligence)

Protection

10th

Service (formerly 9th

Department

(Archives)

Directorate,

Government Guards) Protection of the

6th (Economic

Investigation

Constitution (formerly

Counter-

Department

5th Directorate,

intelligence

Ideology and

and Industrial

Dissidents)

Security)

Operational Technical

--

7th (Surveillance)

(OTU)

KGB

Government Communications

6th Department

Higher

(Interception and

School

Inspection of

Correspondence) 16th

15th (Security of

12th Department

(Communications

Government

Eavesdropping

Interception and

Installations)

Sigint)

Military Construction

Source:

Desmond

Ball

and Robert Windren,

"Soviet Signals Intelligence (Sigint): Organisation

and Management," Intelligence and Naand Gor-

tional Security, vol. iv (1989), no. 4,

dievsky.

651

APPENDIX

652

II